

V 








V • 1 •J* 




>bv T 





t v v a ■» 





•7* ^ 








^ V** \,/ /Jte"v :Mk- \>* :£ 




IK* AWAW/V 



40, 



UNDER THE 



Flag °-™ Orient 



An account of the battle scenes, historical events, tragedies and romances, marvelous 
legends, customs and characters, hopes and promises 
of the race of Israel. 

" Put off thy shoes from off thy feet ; for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground " 

Marion Harland 

Author of 

" Common Sense in the Household," " The Royal Road," " A Gallant Fight," 
" His Great Self," etc. 

CoDlOUslv Illustrated with en 2 ravin S s from Photographic views taken in Palestine, 
r 7 — to which has been added 



The Thrilling Story of Armenia 

With an authentic account of Cruel Persecution by the Moslems 



From facts furnished by missionaries who have traveled and lived among these primitive people, 
and are familiar with their customs, the quiet heroism of their dispositions, 
and the purity and firmness of their principles 



Historical publishing Co. 
philadelphia 

1897 




Copyright 1897, 
By Historical Publishing Co. 

Copyright 1897, 
By Louis KlopscHt. 




of 

Ibistorical lPubltebtng Company, 

flJbilabelpbia, ipenna., 

in. s. m. 



THE ILLUSTRATIONS in this work 
being from original drawings and 
photographs, and protected by Copy- 
right, their reproduction in any form is 
unlawful, and notice is hereby given that 
persons guilty of infringing the Copyright 
thereof will be prosecuted. 



THE VESTIBULE 



GHIS book is not a diary of travel, drawn out in detail to fill a given 
number of pages. Nor does it deal with statistical data and archaeo- 
logical research. My object in going to Palestine was to see with 
fresh eyes, and judge with unprejudiced mind what this, the most 
interesting of lands to the Christian, is like to-day; how the inhabitants look, and 
live, and think, and what traces the traveler finds in the ruins of the Past of the 
nations who flourished, battled and were, in turn, swept from home and country 
by the march of GOD'S providence. 

As a pilgrim, an observer of the people, a student of the various scenes, and 
a historian of the heart-stirring incidents which have immortalized for all the ages 
the country divided between, and apportioned to, the sons of Jacob, I visited the 
Home of the Bible. In reverence of spirit I pursued the path of John the Baptist 
in the wilderness, stood upon the spot where he baptized the " Greater than he," 
and looked across the Dead Sea to the ruins of Machserus where he was. 
beheaded. In more profound reverence I trod the route taken by the Master 
during the three years of the ministry that began at 1 ' the place where John was 
baptizing ' ' at the Jordan, and culminated upon Calvary. With a strange nearness 
of heart and thought to the people and times of patriarch, prophet and apostle, I 
have looked upon the homes of Abraham, David, Isaiah, Samson — of the disciples 
of Christ and the Mother who bore Him. 

Of these places and so many more that the enumeration here would be 
tedious, I have written in familiar style, avoiding statistics and dry historical 
details — most of all, moralizing and preaching. In short, I have let place and 
people speak for themselves. 

The people of Palestine have changed less in their manner of living, customs, 
and their prejudices, than those of any other country; they are almost the same 
to-day that they were two thousand and more years ago. I therefore saw them 

(25) 



THE VESTIBULE. 



practically as Jesus observed them, and studied their characters by the light of 
history. I watched workmen in their shops, husbandmen in the fields, congrega- 
tions in the synagogues, and women in their homes, that I might become familiar 
with the Jews, the Samaritans, the Gadarenes, and all that remnant of ancient 
Israel whose lives span the chasm of years between Abraham and the present. I 
have written for the masses, and if my readers enjoy these contributions to the 
modern history of Palestine as much as I enjoyed the preparation of the same, I 
shall esteem my labors well rewarded and my purpose completely fulfilled. 

The journey was a delight. The telling of it has been a joy into which I 
would fain admit the many who, not having seen the Holy Land, yet love it, and 
to whom whatever will set her clearly and truthfully before their mental vision 
will come as good news from a far country. 




Chapter. Paoe. 

I. From Port Said to Jaffa, 33 

II. In Beirut and Paradise, 40 

III. Martha of Lebanon, 46 

IV. An Afternoon Call, 5S 

V. A Syrian Baby, 65 

VI. In David's Camp, . 72 

VII. The Native Gird, 80 

VIII. Fudda's Betrothal, 87 

IX. Fudda's Wedding, 94 

X. Among the Lepers, 100 

XI. The Pearl of the East, 107 

XII. By the Sea of Gauj.ee . . . 121 

XIII. Where He Was Brought Up, 131 

XIV. From Nain to Jezreel, • 139 

XV. Gideon's Fountain and Dothan, 146 

XVI. The Burden of Samaria, 152 

XVII. Jacob's Well and Joseph's Tomb, 160 

XVIII. The Sons of Ishmael, 170 

XIX. The Sons of Ishmael (Concluded) 177 

XX. The City of the Great King, 185 

XXI. The Mount Called Olivet, 19 6 

XXII. Bethany, 206 

XXIII. On the House-top 214 

XXIV. The W ailing-place, 222 . 

(*7) 



28 CONTENTS. 

Chapter. Pagb 

XXV. A Round of Visits, 228 

XXVI. In a Palankeen to Jericho, 240 

XXVII. Still on the Jericho Road, 249 

XXVIII. The Dead Sea 256 

XXIX. The Jordan, 262 

XXX. Sunday in Camp, 271 

XXXI. "Thine Ancient People the Jews," 281 

XXXII. The Box^Colony, 288 

XXXIII. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, 294 

XXXIV. To Mar-Saba, 309 

XXXV. At Mar-Saba, 316 

XXXVI. Hebron, 323 

XXXVII. The Threshing Floor of Ornan, 333 

XXXVIII. The Green Hill Far Away, 345 

XXXIX. On the Road to Bethlehem, 353 

XL. Christmas in Bethlehem, 3 62 

XLI. Christmas in Bethlehem (Continued), 3 6 9 

Xlvll. Still in Bethlehem, 378 

XLIII. Jaffa, 387 

XLIV. Dragomans and Hotels, 397 

XLV. My Friends, the Missionaries, > 402 



THE STORY OF ARMENIA. 

Pagb. 

Armenia and its People, 415 

The Edict of Extermination, 420 

The Massacre of Sassoon, 421 

The Later Massacres, 425 

The Suffering and Destitution . 432 

The Relief Movement, 435 

The Armenian Revolutionists, 439 

Attitude of the European Powers, 440 

Hope Dawns for Armenia 441 

Action of Our Government 443 



IfebUSTRATIONS 



Page. 


Page. 


The Roadstead at Jaffa 


1A 


House of Chief Leper in Naaman's House 




The Leader of Israel . . 


JO 


of Lepers, . . . 


TOI 


Port Said Family Coming Home From 




Ruins of Naaman's House ... 






38 


' ' They Obtrude Themselves Upon Our 




View From My Window in Beirut, . . . 


4 r 




IO^ 


The " Ecce Homo " Arch, Jerusalem, . . 


42 


Postman Across the Desert From Bagdad 




The Tower of Antonia, the Traditonal 




to Damascus, 


108 




44 


"Paul's Window" in Damascus Wall, 


1 10 


"A Breathing Spell " ... 


A^ 


"Another Bit of City Wall " 


III 


• ' She Looks up From Her Washing, ' ' 


46 


Gibeon, the Scene of Solomon's Sacrifice, 


112 


Persian Peasant Villagers, engaged in 




Tarsus, the Birthplace of the Apostle Paul, 


T J A 
x j q. 


Weaving Mats . . . 


48 


" It is Needless to Say by Whose Hands," 


T T7 
x 1 / 


" Her Flock " . 


AQ 


Soudanese Boatmen on the Nile 


Il8 


Bread-making, .... 


0^ 


Bannu, in Wazaristan, Near the Scene of 




" Brought Upon Her Shoulder," . . . , 


yJO 


the Recent Massacre, . . 


HQ 
x xy 


In the Threshing-floor, . . ... 


^4 


' ' Her Fat PuoDy ' ' 


121 


"It is Quiescent Under Treatment," . . 


DO 


" TllP Ffitiff* T'onnl atioti of" Onnprrmnm " 


I 22 


" Her Turf-roofed Hut," . . . . 


s6 


Mount of Bpati tn ripe; 




A Ploughman of the Valley of the Nile, 


oy 


XL VV do LCI Ldxxxl V XICIC xydSL x Cell , . • 


TO/I 
124 


Minaret in Jerusalem, . . . 


60 


A IVTonprti T^icnitio*.-Vir*£it nn T - > 1.^ ( ^ n 1 1 

-*.x inuuci H X Ijllllltc UKJcLL W 1 i x/aKC VJTCllliC 




A Syrian Mother and Her Child, .... 


66 


saret 


126 


The House in Joppa, Said to be that of 






127 


Simon the Tanner , . 


68 


KTn itcpl 1 prQ iti flip fttt"pptc c\T Tf^fn co 1 aiti 

X XUXLoV-XXdo XXI LXXvT V_? H V. L L O UI J CI UoalCXllj . 


128 


Sheik and Muleteers at Evening 


7T 


1 Tip ^Fown of "NTaTafAtVi ao if A nnpsrc fn- 
X11C iUWll \JJl IN dZ.a.1 CLxl, as 1L xxjjjjtrcllo X yj 




" Thrust Them Into the Inner Prison and 




day 


t in 


Made Their Feet Fast in the Stocks," . 


TX 
1 


' ' He Laughed and His Hands Chafed 




" There is Our Camp," 


74 


One Another " 


T XI 


Ttitpfior of £i TTmicsf^ in Dfltnacnic 


1 c 

75 


"A firrmn r>f PnilrlrAti " 


T 34 




76 


Kirjath Jearim, the Resting Place of the 




Dr. Yoseph Surrounded by a Group of 




Ark, 






78 




136 


Mrs. David Jam al's "Industrial Class" 






137 


of Syrian Girls, 


81 


"Allah Is Good !" 


140 


Coasts of Tyre and Sidon, Between Jaffa 






142 




84 


Syrian Bread and Cake Venders, .... 


143 


" Women Who Are Never Mature in In- 






145 


v tellect," 


85 


A Native Christian Family at Cisamba, . 


147 


"A Child, and Nothing More," 


88 


"The Spot Selected By Our Attendants," 


148 


Fudda at the Well, 


90 


A Group Outside the Mill, 


•149 


"It Was Plain to be Seen That He Was 




Russian Peasant Women at Work in the 




Pleased." 


96 


Field, 


150 




99 


" Carrying the Money With Them," . . 


153 



(29) 



3o 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 



Page 


Page- 


" The Dreary Line of Nameless Columns," 


155 


Garden of Gethsemane, the Holv Land, . 


204 




157 


"It Has Been Washed This Morning," . 


206 


Jacob's Well, Before the Recent Ex- 




Modern Bethany, 


207 


cavations, Ebal and Gerizim in back- 






209 




159 


" Listens with Downcast Ej'es," .... 


212 




161 


" In Bethany," 


2ix 



Dr. Currie's First Home at Cisamba, . . 


162 


" An Odd, Charming Place," 


215 


Thessalonica, Now Known as Salonica, in 




"The Host Meets Us," 


216 




162 


"One Cannot Wish for a Nicer Place," . 


217 




163 


"The Little Wife Still Chats with the 






164 




210 

y 


" The Girl We Met at Banias." 


165 




220 


Gate of Banias (the Ancient Dan), . . . 


166 




223 




167 


Wailing-Place and Upper Courses of 






169 




225 


" Having Witnessed the Parting," . . . 


171 




226 


Tea at Our Own Tent Door, .... 


172 


"A Stirring and Noble Housewife," . . . 


22Q 
y 


Mount Olympus, from the Plains of Thes- 




"When He had Offered Isaac, His Son," 


231 




174 


Courtyard of a Home in Nazareth, . . . 


233 


Scene in a Persian Caravansarv, .... 


I7S 


" She Ran Wild Upon the Streets," . . . 


2^5 

DO 


Drawing Water from the Cisamba River, . 


175 


Holiday Street Scene in Jerusalem, . . . 


237 


The Mausoleum of Absalom, near Jeru- 




The Damascus Gate, Jerusalem, .... 


238 




178 




241 


" The Son of the Sheik, " 


I7Q 


" Our Fresh Start," 


242 


" Handsome, Black-eyed and Merry," . . 


180 




243 


The Brook Kedron, 


l8l 


" The Fountain of the Apostles," . . . . 


244 


"The Tribal Poet," 


182 


Ruins of a Roman Watch Tower, .... 


245 




184 


' ' The Sheik Mounts Guard Without, ' ' . 


247 


" A City that is Compact Together," . . 


186 


" A Miniature Edition of a Convent," 


251 


The Mount Called Olivet, 


187 




253 


" The Prince of Hotel Managers," . . . 


188 




254 


Mount Zion and the Mount of Olives 




Women Crossing the Plain on their Way 




from " Pompey's Field," 


l8q 




257 


" Picturesqueness is a Part of their Busi- 






258 


ness," 


IQI 


Sand-dunes and Clumps of Scrub Growth, 


2^Q 


Tower of David 


IQ2 


Encampment Upon the Jordan, . . 


26l 


"The Driver of a Muddy Hack," .... 




A Ferry Over the River Jordan, Showing 




The Jerusalem of To-day, 




the Thither Bank of the Jordan, . . . 


26^ 


(So-called) Tomb of the Kings, Without 




Party of Tourists on the Jordan, .... 


264 




197 


"Unconscious David, Water-jug in Hand," 


265 




I98 




266 




199 


"Gathered by David from the Edge of 




"They Slink Back Mute," . . . . 


20I 




267 


" Over and Beyond the Rounded Crowns 






268 


of the Olives," 


202 




269 


Aged Olive Tree in the Garden of Geth- 




Armenian Villagers of Van Province near 






203 




272 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 



Page. 





273 




274 




275 


Fountain of Elisha, Seen from Mound 






276 




277 




278 




279 


In the " Box Colony," Jerusalem, . . . . 


282 




283 


Jewish Immigrants in Jerusalem, . . . 


284 


"His Inferior in Appearance and in Of- 






285 




288 


A Sugar Cane Booth in the City of Cairo, 






289 


" Something Little Better than Beggars," 


290 




292 


Ruins of the Hospital of St. John, Jeru- 






295 


Church of Holy Sepulchre, Courtyard 




and Entrance, Showing Tomb of God- 






297 


Interior of Church of Holy Sepulchre, 






298 


The (alleged) Tomb of Christ in Church 






300 




301 


" There Are a Great Many of Them," . . 


302 




3°3 


"I Don't See Why Not," 


304 




305 




308 




310 




312 


Tower of Justinian at Mar-Saba, .... 


313 


The Face of the Cliff at Mar-Saba . . . 


3 T 5 


" In Silence as Sullen," 


3i6 


"Held Tenderly Between His Strong 




Hands," 


317 


Some of Our Visitors at Mar-Saba, . . . 


3i8 


Convent Seen from the Table Rock, . . 


319 


Grackles Feeding in Courtyard of Con- 






320 


" Arrested Upon the Half-step," . . . . 


321 




324 


Tree of Abraham, Hebron, Holy Land, . 


325 



31 

Page. 

Women Carrying Water-skins at Solo- 
mon's Pools, 326 

Pigskin Water-bottle, 327 

Man Ploughing with Camel, 328 

The City of Hebron as it now Appears, . 330 

Mosque of Omar, 332 

Mohammed the Magnificent, 334 

Mosaics in Facade of Mosque of Omar, . 335 

The Rock, 336 

Mosque of Omar, 337 

The Tower of Antonia, Jerusalem .... 338 

Judgment Seat of Solomon, 339 

Mosque of Aska, in Grounds of Mosque 

of Omar, 340 

Beautiful Gate of the Temple, 341 
(So-called) Stables of Solomon in Temple 

Ana, 342 

Interior of Beautiful Gate of the Temple, 344 

Street Scenes in the City of Cairo, . . . 345 

Mohammedan Carpet-weaver, 346 

Baking Bread and Grinding Corn in 

Persia, 346 

' ' A Great Hebrew Cemetery Lay About 

the Base, " 347 

" The Solitary Tomb," 348 

" Oddly Riven from Top to Bottom," . . 350 

Grotto of Jeremiah in the Side of Calvary, 351 

The Stone of Elijah, 354 

The House of Benjamin, 355 

' ' Well of the Three Kings, " 356 

Tomb of Rachel, 357 

" Heaps Pressing Down the Dead, " . . . 358 

In the Field of Boaz, 359 

Tomb of Rachel 360 

On the Roof, . 362 

A Company of Gypsies, 363 

" One End of the Market Place," .... 364 
" Upon the Roof of a Low Wing of the 

Barracks," 365 

" The Gorgeous Pageant," 366 

" Every House-top is Filled," 367 

Church of the Nativity, Seen from Below, 370 

The Church of the Nativity, 371 

Area About the Gypsy Camp, 372 

Interior of Church of the Nativity, ... 373 

Great Square at Noon, 374 

Field of the Shepherds, 376 



3 2 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 



Page. 

Russian Pilgrims, 379 

Grotto of the Nativity, 380 

Back Street in Bethlehem, 381 

Manger in Church of Nativity, 382 

Daughter and Daughter-in-Law, .... 383 

The Sad-Eyed Bridegroom, 384 

Village of Abou-Goch, on the Road from 
Jerusalem to Jaffa, 386 



House of Simon the Tanner, in Jaffa, . . 388 
Olive Grove Near Jaffa, 389 



Pagb. 



Camels Laden with Jaffa Oranges, . . . 390 

Fountain in Jaffa, 391 

Street in Old Jaffa, 392 

Jaffa ( Joppa) from the Harbor, 393 

Market Place in Jaffa, 396 

" Our Incomparable Dragoman," . . . . 398 

Front of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem, . 405 

Gate of St. Stephen, Jerusalem, 407 

Golden Gate, Jerusalem, . . 409 



General View of the Vasques of Solomon, 411 



Page. 

The Dardanelles, 415 

Kurdish House and Inmates, 416 

Armenian Women Baking Cakes, ... 417 

Mt. Ararat and Little Ararat, 418 

Kurdish Robbers, 419 

Armenian Girls Spinning, 421 

Refugees from Sassoon, 422 

Kurdish Chief, 423 

Massacre in the Streets, 424 

Trebizond— General View, 427 

Armenians in Prison 428 

Mgr. Izmirlian, Patriarch of Constanti- 
nople, 429 



Page. 



Child Victims at Erzeroum, ....... 431 

Armenian Refugees on the Frontier, . . 432 

Hunger Bread, 433 

Armenian Bread Makers 434 

A Relief Commissioner Passing Ararat, . 435 

Armenian Beggar of Van, 436 

Portrait of Dr. Grace N. Kimball, . . . 437 

Group of Destitute Armenians, 438 

Portrait of Clara Barton, 443 

The Fleets at Anchor 444 

Karpoot — View of the Burned Mission 

Buildings, 445 

Marash — The American College, .... 445 



9 




A SCHOOL IN CAIRO, NEAR THE HOUSE WHERE JOSEPH, MARY AND JESUS LODGED. 



The Flag of the Orient 



CHAPTER I. 

FROM PORT SAID TO JAFFA. 

had expected to rough it at some, and probably at several, periods 
of our journey ings. We had not expected that the process would 
begin upon one of the far-famed steamers of the Peninsular and 
Oriental line, plying between England, Australia and India. Per- 
haps we were unreasonable in comparing ' ' The Coromandel , ' ' on which we took 
passage from Marseilles, with the floating palaces that make an Atlantic voyage 
endurable to the least sea- worthy tourist. Certain it is that the Peninsular and 
Oriental craft suffered grievously by the contrast. The table was little better than 
that of a second-class boarding-house; the appointments of the state-rooms — 
"cabins " as they are called by the English — were mean and uncomfortable, the 
dining-saloon so narrow and dark as to make meals a penitential process. 

Added to these drawbacks to the comfort of the voyagers was the circum- 
stance that the Mediterranean was in a bad humor, and so maltreated us that 
three-quarters of the land-farers on board were wretchedly ill, until we were flung, 
as it were, into the Straits of Messina, and, under the lee of Sicily, glided into 
the blue placidity of what, for the first time since our embarkation, deserved the 
name of a u summer sea." It kept up this reputation to the end of our voyage — 
the harbor of Port Said, at the mouth of the Suez Canal. There we discovered, 
to our chagrin, that the steamer which was to have taken us on up to Beirut 
upon the day succeeding our arrival was detained — nobody knew where — in 
quarantine — nobody knew for what — and no other would sail within four days. 
The town is drearily modern, cheaply built as an entry -port to the canal upon a 
low-lying sand-bank. 

Before we had been an hour in the " Hotel Continental," we made the dis- 
covery that there was not a woman-emplo}^ in the house. Our beds were made, 
our rooms swept and dusted, and all other functions of chambermaids performed 
by men, brown of face, black-eyed, and arrayed in a mongrel costume of jacket, 
3 (33) 




34 



THE FIvAG OF THE ORIENT. 



blue blouse and trousers. They moved quickly and quietly, they answered the 
bell promptly and were the very soul of civility. Recalling certain experiences 
in what we used to call "the waiter-girl belt" of the Western States, and the 
deliberate indifference, sometimes verging upon sullenness, of the ' ' young ladies 
out at service ' ' in the Middle and Eastern sections of our free and enlightened 
land, we confessed that the chamberman s}'stem has notable advantages. 




THE ROADSTEAD AT JAFFA. 



During our first stroll through the little town, we wondered where all the 
women who must wive the men, and mother the boys thronging the streets kept 
themselves. Except for an occasional French, or English, or American, in 
bonnet, jacket and gown of European birth or descent, we met not one represen- 
tative of "the dominant sex." On the next day, we took one of the few 
carriages that are a discord in the Oriental tone of the region, and, accompanied 
by a swarthy dragoman from the hotel, drove through the native quarter. 



36 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



Women were there, in number and variety sufficient to quiet our speculations. 
They sat flat in the doors of the houses, or upon the ground against the outer 
walls of the same, knitting, tending babies and gossiping; they stirred messes in 
brass pots over braziers of charcoal, and made coffee for men who sat cross-legged 
upon the bare earth to drink it; they sold beads, sweetmeats, sausages, uninviting 
vegetables and less attractive fruit — apples, dates and lemons — at stalls set right 
in the street. However engaged, they were covered up to the eyes in a sort of 
combination-suit of circular cloak, hood and veil, usually black, and of some 
opaque material. It is picturesque, and, after the manner of many other pictur- 
esque costumes, it must be inconvenient and unpleasant, especially in a country 
where the thermometer in December ranges at noon from seventy-three to ninety- 
six in the shade. How a native woman, thus muffled up and swathed, can 
discharge even the few domestic duties incumbent upon one who, as we have 
seen, lives and keeps house mainly in the open air, is a hopeless puzzle to the 
foreign observer. That nothing may be lacking from the discomfort of mantle, 
wimple and veil, our Arabian, or Egyptian, or Syrian matron wears, in token of 
her honorable estate of wedlock, a brass tube, nearly an inch in diameter, strapped 
perpendicularly upon her forehead directly between her eyebrows and in a line 
with the bridge of her nose. Close scrutiny showed us the black string attached 
to one end and losing itself in the close black hood which forms the upper part 
of the mantle; how it was attached to the veil below is still to us an Oriental 
enigma. Through this pipe, Mohammed, or some other Moslem authority in 
spiritual matters, is supposed to breathe admonition, counsel and consolation as 
the married devotee requires it. 

Making our way slowly through the motley crowds of the native quarter, our 
coachman and dragoman yelling incessantly to the pedestrians to clear the roads, 
and the whip of the driver doing sharp execution upon the bare legs of innumer- 
able boys and lads whose brown bodies were covered to the knee by a single 
garment, half-frock, half-trousers — we at length escaped from din and dinginess 
and a nameless and altogether nauseous mixture of vile odors, into an open road- 
way, laid along the water's edge to the cemetery, two miles from the town. To 
secure this roadway, a curbing of solid stone was laid on both sides, the space 
between being filled with earth and sand. After leaving the outskirts of Port 
Said, there were no signs of human habitation except a few scattered hovels 
dotting the waste on our left. About the doors small black pigs rooted and 
squealed; a stray dog skulked in the forlorn hope of a supper, and toward the 
desert three camels, with outstretched noses, followed their masters. We watched 
them kneel to be unloaded, and then remain quiet on the sand for their nightly 
rest. The only symptom of vegetation, as far as eye could reach, was in clumps 
of something we mistook for beach-grass, until the dragoman plucked a branch for 



THE Fly AG OF THE ORIENT. 



37 



our inspection, and we found it strangely succulent, with fleshy leaves and even 
small yellow berries, ovate and pulpy. 

Right in the middle of this desert arose the walls of the cemeteries — the 
Christian, devoted to the interment of French Roman Catholics and Egyptian 
Copts, and the Moslem, where lie "the faithful" of whatever nationality. We 
looked into the first, seeing nothing very different from the tall crosses and head- 
stones hung with tawdry immortelles and beads, such as we had beheld in dozens 
of other foreign burial-grounds. We alighted at the gate of the Moslem cemetery 
and entered the enclosure. Arid sand for many feet downward is the substance 
through which the graves are sunk. Within a few days after the mound is heaped 
above the sleeper below, the meeting winds of sea and desert tear it down and 
whirl the sand to the four quarters of the enclosure. Hence, as soon as may be, 
a box, of the shape and size of the grave, is fitted over it. When the relatives 
can afford it, a structure of similar form in cement takes the place of the wooden 
case. Upon box and cement are written the names of the deceased and texts 
from the Koran. Above many of the rude tombs arise coop-like constructions, 
with trellised sides and tops, within which stand pots of dwarf palms, of cacti, 
geraniums, and, once in a great while, of sickly vines, pathetic to behold in a 
region where rain does not fall for months together, and water is sold to the poor 
by the jar or skinful. 

There are no regular walks or avenues, and wherever the graves were not 
protected by boxes the sand bore the imprint of many feet. Reading the way to 
the outermost row of graves, the guide pointed to a line of freshly -heaped mounds, 
to the head-boards of which were tied shabby bunches of palm-leaves, palm- 
branches and artificial flowers. 

"If you had been here this morning," he explained in execrable French 
enlivened by insupportable English, "you would have seen two thousand women 
— perhaps more, maybe less — here, crying, and crying, and crying, and telling 
how good her husband was, or her child was so sweet, or how she mourned her 
father, or her sister, or her brother, and did break her heart for her mother, died 
so long ago. They come so, every Friday, and cry just the same and ever so 
hard, and it is they who do this " — pointing to the newer mounds. " These are 
they who were buried of late, you comprehend; and the ladies, they keep them 
high until the boards go about them — so they be not blown away by the sea-wind 
— you comprehend ?' ' 

Friday is the Moslem Sabbath, and this pious pilgrimage is a duty to be per- 
formed upon the holy day. Hearing the tale, we looked with different eyes upon 
the sandy heaps raised by pitying hands; the already withering memorials lashed 
to the main head-boards had mining and poetry. The woman-heart is the same 
the world around. 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



39 



At the end of the row of new mounds was an open grave. ' 1 When is this to 
be filled ?" I asked, knowing that burial in this tropical country follows with 
awful rapidity upon death, and supposing that the pit was dug purposely for 
somebody. 

The dragoman shrugged his shoulders. 

"Ah ! who can know? It may be to-morrow; it may be next week. But 
there is always one ready. Somebody must come to fill it some day. You com- 
prehend ?" 

Comprehend ! ah, but too well ! That, also, was an old, old story, known 
wherever men and women live and die. 

Heaven forbid that we, or any of our blood, should ever die at Port Sai'd! 

I was awakened this morning, after a night's voyage upon the still pacific 
Mediterranean, by a voice outside my cabin, vibrant with emotion, hardly 
repressed : 

' * Have we reached Joppa ? 

1 ' In an hour, madame ! ' ' 

Peeping beyond the edge of my door, I saw a woman gazing through an open 
port-hole with an expression that sent me to my own window. The east was 
flushed and golden in welcome to the coming sun; the sea dimpled with smiles; at 
the meeting of sky and water lay a dark irregular line of hills. It was my first 
glimpse of the Holy Eand — and beautiful exceedingly ! Yet, presently, I went 
back for another glance at my neighbor's face. Unconscious of possible scrutiny, 
her eyes were still fixed upon the horizon-line, and soul and thought went with 
them. She may have been fifty years of age, she was thin in face and figure, and 
plain- featured. She may have been a Yankee school-mistress or an English 
ex-governess. Something in her air forbade the supposition that she was illiterate 
or underbred; under the rushing association of the scene, the commonplace visage 
was glorified. In spirit she was on her knees before the altar of the hills, behind 
which gleamed the flame of a new day. I knew as surely as if she had broken 
into a Magnificat, that, like myself, she had longed through years for this hour; 
that nothing in human language could voice aright the emotions swelling her 
heart to actual pain. 

Whatever may be the degree of disillusionment which many well-meaning 
people predict for us in our pilgrimage, I shall always be thankful that I met in 
that still hour, in spirit, the simple devoutness I read in the face of a stranger 
whose name I shall never know, and who will never suspect my reverent 
sympathy with her mood. 



CHAPTER II. 



IN BEIRUT AND PARADISE. 

OU have made a paradise here !" said a visitor to the 

owner of a city garden. 

" Humph |" looking sourly at the dingy, ill-built 
cross streets b}' which his home and grounds were 
surrounded. ' ' But you see I have to go through the 
other place to get to my Paradise !" 

The growl recurred to me as we climbed the stone 
steps leading from the boat that had brought us to the 
Beirut landing. The yellow walls, red roofs and, 
what were at that distance, hanging gardens, of the 
town sloped upward to the brow of a hill that is not 
shamed by Mount Lebanon facing it across the nar- 
rowed sea. Tall palms showed above masses of olive, 
fig and mulberry trees and flowering vines. 
At the head of the flight of stairs rocked and yelled a crowd in motley array. 
Had time and quiet been vouchsafed, we could have identified Parthians, and 
Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, Phrygia and Pamphylia and 
in Egypt. Strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes assuredly had their represen- 
tative waves in the surf of humanity, and Cretes and Arabians were loudest of 
lung, most violent of gesticulation. We were upon the topmost step when a big 
fellow in a black gown and a white cap reeled almost to the lower from a push 
dealt by a smaller man in custom-house livery. Before our turn came to stand in 
the official presence, two others were thrust from a door leading to an inner room. 
If there were one hundred men there, eighty-eight were vociferating in half-a-dozen 
different dialects, with apparently eighty-eight separate and dire grievances. 

David Jamal — the impassively courteous dragoman — looked twice over his 
shoulder to say, " Keep close to me!" and in the lee of his broad back we waited 
until he presented our passports, with a grave bow, to the aforesaid functionary. 
He was not a large functionary, as I have said; he was young, and nature, in 
bestowing upon him a round face and fresh- colored cheeks, had not intended him 
to look fierce. He achieved a tolerable imitation of ferocity, as, jerking open the 
folds of the documents, and glaring from them to us, he demanded in English: 
" Why didn't they have them visSd by the Turkish consul in America?" 

(40) 




THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



4i 



We said nothing, but we were net abashed. David was running the affair; 
we had a serene sense of being only passengers. Had we taken part in the con- 
versation, it w r ould have been to ask why in the name of reason and the law of 
nations, w T e should have the papers vised by the Turkish, any more than by the 
English, German, French, Egyptian, Austrian, Grecian and Italian consuls. As 
an illustration of the Turkish principles that might makes right and occupation 
signifies despotic power, our officer sat down at a table, after three minutes of 




VIEW FROM MY WINDOW IN BEIRUT. 



heathenish raging, and executed a half-score of scratches in the corner of each 
passport, for which w r e paid six dollars and a half. 

" Now, be off with you !" was the next mandate, and, still in David's wake, 
we passed into an inner and — incredible as it would have seemed a moment ago — 
a noisier court, where our luggage was examined. Men in braided jackets and 
red fezes, with swords at their sides, fell upon our respectable trunks, satchels and 
shawl- straps, as tigers upon sheep, tore out books, clothing and shoes, opened boxes 
and portfolios, ran rude hands into the depths and under the sides of the dis- 
ordered mass. A wild exclamation burst from two who had in hand a shawl-strap 
containing a sea- rug and something hard and square. In a twinkling, buckles were 
loosened, the suspicious folds undone, and Alcides's kodak lay revealed to the 



42 THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 

majesty of the Ottoman government. The wolfish gleam in eyes that beheld the 
smiles we did not try to repress would have meant bastinado and bow-string 
a century-and-a-half ago. 

While the examination was going on, I had retired to a bench behind a 
sort of counter, and, always serene in the persuasion that ours was a second- 
ary interest in the scene so long as our dragoman stood dignified and unbend- 
ing, in the fore-front of the 
battle, entertained m y s e 1 f 
with watching our fellow- 
victims. 

One old Greek, with 
grizzled beard and travel- 
stained robe, had no less than 
six bags of divers materials, 
all sewed up with strong 
twine. 

He actually threw him- 
self upon them, as an officer 
whipped out a knife and 
began cutting the stitches. 

A second official flew to 
his comrade's aid and tore the 
lean arms from their hold. 

After that, they left not 
one stitch upon another to 
tell the tale. 

Out tumbled upon the 
floor what looked more like 
the contents of a rag-bag than 
any possible valuables. 

The officers kicked them 
apart and over, and leaving 
them where they lay, turned 
to the wretched owner, who was now blubbering like a seven-year-old baby, 
and dived into his pockets. From one they drew a filthy calico bag, containing 
what from the shape and size might have been marbles, and, after shaking it 
before his eyes, transferred it to the pocket of one of his tormentors. The old 
Greek sat like Marius in the middle of ruin, watering the dusty floor with his 
tears, when, our own belongings having been restored to the trunks and bags by 
David and his men, we left the screeching babel behind. 




THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



43 



Nobody can form an approximate idea of the tumult accompanying what 
I have but faintly described, unless he has with his own ears taken in as 
much of it as the excruciated tympanum can bear. I had lain upon the 
lounge in my room in the Hotel d' Orient — a chamber with a ceiling fully 
twenty feet high, looking across the blue waters to the Lebanon range for 
an hour before the horrid din ceased to vibrate upon the nerves of hearing. 
Then — a card was brought to me, accompanied by a gift of fruit and flow- 
ers, and the gates of Paradise began to swing ajar. 

The}* were wide open as we drove, later in the day, to the higher part 
of the town where are situated the buildings of the Syrian Protestant Col- 
lege — that splendid monument of Christian genius and faith in those who 
founded and have conducted it, and of the Christian liberality of large- 
minded men at home. As we cleared the lower streets, vegetation became 
more abundant and of tropical luxuriance. The yellow stone walls on each 
hand were overtopped by masses of verdure ; passion flowers showed darkly- 
purple among the five-fingered leaves of vines running over verandas and 
house-fronts and along the rough walls. 

Intersecting lanes were lined with tall cacti, the fleshy leaves as large as a 
man's hand, the stalks near the ground larger than a man's arm. Oleanders, 
pink and white, blossomed upon trees fifteen and twenty feet high ; the regal 
" poinsettia," cultivated in American conservatories, spread broad disks of 
scarlet upon shrubs six feet in height ; orange trees hung full of fruit, and 
under those laden with the dwarf variety of the same — known in our country as 
"tangerines," — here and in Southern Europe as "mandarins" — the sweet aro- 
matic globes lay as plentifully as windfall apples in a New England orchard. But 
the roses ! the roses ! growing rankly in ever}- garden, and requiring little atten- 
tion except from the pruning-knife — Marechal Neils, La France, tea-roses, yellow, 
white, crimson and pink — of which one can buy a half-bushel of buds and blossoms 
for fifteen cents — filling street and lanes with perfumes — how can white paper 
and black ink convey to my far-away audience an adequate idea of the wealth and 
beaut}- and sweetness in a Syrian rose-garden? Now and then, a whiff of subtler 
fragrance called our eyes to a mantle of jasmine draping a wall, and as our 
•carriage drew up in front of the house built by a wealthy American for the Presi- 
dent of the College, Dr. Bliss, whose name and fame are dear to all conversant 
with the story of Syrian missions, our wheels brushed against a hedge of rose- 
geranium. - 

Such were the external phases of our paradise on that late autumnal afternoon. 
Lovelier and far dearer was that unexpected welcome that awaited us from those 
who ceased to be strangers from the moment our hands met in greeting. This is 
not the place, nor is mine the province, to give a statistical history of the glorious 



44 THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 

educational institution — the light-house set on a hill — through which we were cour- 
teously conducted. We attended afternoon prayers in the fine chapel, the gift of 
another of our Christian countrymen. The services were all in Arabic — the selec- 
tion of Scripture, the hymn, set to an Arabic air, and the prayer by Dr. Post — 
the distinguished 



head of the medical 
department of what 
is, to all intents and 
purposes, a univer- 
sity. The students 
are chiefly Syrians, 
many of them be- 
longing to Moslem 
families, but there 
are Egyptians among 
them, and here and 
there an uncovered 
head bespoke Greek 
parentage or birth. 

Then we had 
what our English 
cousins know as " a 
cup of afternoon 
tea," in the cosy 
parlor of the Prece- 
dent's house. My 
cup was the more 
delicious because 
passed to me by a 
bright -faced, sweet- 




voiced girl — a mis- the tower of antonia, the traditional 

sionary in the third prison of peter. 

generation— to whom 

Arabic is as familiar as English. The tea-drinking was a prelude to a Thanks- 
giving gathering held two evenings later in the house of Professor Porter. Reck- 
oning backward, as befitted our eastern pilgrimage, we computed that at the very 
hour in which we were thinking of and praying for "home and native land,'* 
hundreds of thousands of happy families were discussing Thanksgiving dinners. 
A sweet savor of turkey and pumpkin pies floated into the imagination, and as 
we sang, with a will, "My Country, 'tis of Thee," we could almost catch the 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



45 



echoes left in the welkin by the millions of voices that had shouted it that day. 
We had much and delightful social communing when the more formal exercises of 
the evening were over. To us, the newly arrived, the cordial hospitality then and 
there received, the pleasant ring of American voices, the genial warmth of in- 
quiries as to our plans, and offers of co-operation in our work, are among the things 
one dare not trust oneself to commit to paper. As I write, the sunset is bathing 
the Lebanon Mountains with pink. The Lebanon, where Hiram's men relieved 
Solomon's in regular turn in lifting axes upon thick trees. The floats which were 
to convey the felled cedars to Joppa were moored over there in the bay. The wash 

of the waves mingles 
with the tinkle of the 
donkey -bells from the 
street below, that re- 
minds one oddly of 
sleighing season. 

Circumstances 
have compelled us to 
tarry for a few days in 
this land of Beulah. 
The sea lies behind us, 
the hills and desert are 
before us, the breath- 
ing spell is welcome. 
Such wealth of kind- 
ness, such Christianly- 
affectionate treat- 
ment as has been ours 
from the ' hour we 
"a breathing SPEU,." cleared the purgatory 

of the lower town, add sensibly to one's wealth of heart and memory. The 
recollection will sound through the years to come like the soothing murmur of 
the Mediterranean upon the Beirut beach; lie upon ' ' mountain-ranges over- 
past " of experience, as the sunset flush upon Lebanon. 

" Everything is ready for to-morrow, David?" as the majestic figure bows in 
the doorway. 

"Everything, madame; my men, implements and animals." 
" To-morrow, then, begins our real work?" 
David bows again, his hand on his heart. 

"Not of myself, madame, but with God's help, I hope to see you safely to 
your journey's end !" 




CHAPTER III. 



MARTHA OF LEBANON. 

✓~^wf HE looks up from her washing as we near her home. Her laundry is 
A^^^^L roofed by a friendly fig-tree; one side is protected from the wind by 
k j a wall of loosely-laid stones, picked up in the adjacent fields. Her 
J^<—^ house joins this at a right angle. Upon her right hand is a confused 
heap of baskets, water-pots, sticks and straw. A chicken roosts 
apon the topmost basket and will probably sleep in it to-night. A shapeless gar- 
ment that may be Martha's own "izzar," or her husband's trousers, is spread 
upon the heap to dry. 

The entire furniture of the laundry is in full sight, when we have added to it 
her ' 1 set tub. ' ' I need not remind American housewives of the insistence of Irish 
help upon this 1 ' convaynience ' ' of every well- x&^J|-£* 
ordered household. Martha's tub is a great % 
metal bowl, and it is set between her knees, her 
seat being the earth from which she — and we — 
sprang. One daughter sits with folded hands '^IHBr 
beside her; another is lazily stirring lentil pot- * ^ m/^' -i 

tage in the pot used awhile ago for heating 
the water required for her mother's morning 
task. For Martha, be it understood, is as 
sensible of the desirableness of having both 
* * hot and cold water ' ' when she is about her 
washing, as Bridget-of-the-bog. She makes 
a little go very far, however, and the fire of 
sticks over which it was heated having burned " she woks up from hkr washing." 
itself out into a bed of clear coals, she utilizes it and the kettle in the preparation 
of the family supper. 

The family wash is not large. When she has rubbed, rinsed, and wrung a 
couple of white izzars for herself, a cotton tunic or shirt for her lord, and two or 
three sheets for the baby, the bulk of the work is disposed of. Those who groan 
over the " heavy wash of a- Monday " in our more (or less) favored land, can form 
an idea of the diminution of toil that would be brought about by the absence 
from the weekly tale of articles, of towels, table-cloths, sheets, napkins, stockings, 

(46) . 




THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



47 



handkerchiefs and underclothing of all kinds. Martha wears neither shoes nor 
stockings, nor does any member of her flock. Each is habited in at least one gar- 
ment, for she is a decent body, and scorns the shiftless neighbors who suffer their 
boys to run abroad with no covering on their supple bodies. When the solitary 
frock or tunic or " combination suit " of blouse and trousers drops quite to pieces, 
a new one is substituted, and the remnants of the former are worked up in some 
manner. By the time that the washing is spread upon the stones and underbrush 
to dry, it is time the bread, set to rise this morning in a red earthen pan, should 
be kneaded. The kitchen is on the other side of the house. Martha has ideas of 
the fitness of things, and does not "clutter," as the manner of some is. She has 
all of out-of-doors to work in and uses what she needs. A cloth is laid under the 
low table which is sprinkled thickly with flour before the risen dough is cast upon 
it. What falls from the board during the kneading will thus be saved. With 
rapid touches she brings the yielding lump into a ball, and tosses it from one hand 
to the other with incredible swiftness. It grows in size and lightness before your 
eyes, and when she adjudges it to be light and large enough, is turned to the 
board and patted into a sheet hardly thicker than stout writing-paper. A round, 
slightly convex piece of iron, not unlike a shield in form and size, has been heat- 
ing over coals glowing within a sort of semi-circular fender of red clay. The 
bread-sheet is laid upon the shield and cooks quickly. As each relay is browned, 
it is transferred to a wicker tray to cool, and another takes its place. These cakes 
have a top and bottom crust with a void space between them. They are usually 
sour. Indeed, most of the bread I have eaten, or tried to eat, in Syria, is sour, 
and my soul loathes it. Martha's cakes are likewise tough, shortening being an 
unknown quantity in the manufacture. 

The family, as a rule, meet at but one meal in the day, and that is supper. 
Unless it rains, they will partake of this under the fig-tree, and chickens and dogs 
mil be in readiness to devour such scraps as may be flung to them. Less careful 
providers do not get up a hot supper every day of the week, contenting themselves 
with preparing a great pot of stew of some description on alternate days, and 
eating what is left over on the morrow. Martha looks well to the ways of her 
household. Her husband earns a matter of thirty-two cents a day — which goes as 
far as a dollar- and- a-quarter would in the United States— and deserves a comfort- 
able, orderly meal when he comes home in the evening. To-night, it will be 
"that same red pottage" we have seen the daughter stirring in the pot. We 
would call the lentils composing it brown; Martha knows them as red, and the 
dish she evolves from them is, we believe, identical with that bought by hungry 
Esau from his "smart" brother. The dried lentils are soaked, then boiled and 
drained, and left to cool and stiffen for awhile. Half-an-hour or so before supper, 
they will be thrown into boiling oil or fat of some kind, and heated thoroughly^ 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



49 



then seasoned and poured into a large crockery or wooden bowl. If she would 
have it especially savory, she fries an onion in the fat before putting in the lentils. 

" You will observe," says our interpreter, " that this is not porridge, nor yet 
what the French cooks set before us as ' potage, ' or a 'puree.' It is a dish of 
pottage." 

It gives forth a goodly smell as it reeks in kettle and bowl. I have eaten it 
with hearty relish more than once in hotel and private house, and never without 




a sorrowful thought of the hungry hunter who made an unlucky meal of 1 ' bread 
and pottage of lentils." 

He doubtless ate it as Martha's spouse will eat of this, from a bowl set flat 
upon the earth. The family gather about it, cross-legged, or, as one traveler puts 
it — "sitting upon nothing, as only Orientals can sit." Each tears off a bit of 
leathery crust from a round cake of bread, dips it deftly into the pottage, securing 
enough to envelope in the folded scrap of crust, which is thus conveyed to the 
mouth. As a fresh bit of bread is used each time the "sop" is dipped, the 
4 



5© 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



method is not unclean — provided always that the eater's fingers are clean. In 
view of the scarcity of water in the land, and the absenee of towels, not to mention 
the various uses to which bowls are put, we do not inquire wisely when we give 
this point too much consideration. 

To-morrow, Martha may serve a stew of potatoes, flavored with onions and 
unctuous with grease. After the custom of the peasantry of all countries, the 
lower classes of Northern and Southern S3 T ria are inordinately fond of fat and 
sweets. Potatoes, although introduced into Syria by missionaries, less than a 
century ago, have taken kindly to the soil and are a favorite dish. Or, she may 
pull up a cabbage from the plot of garden behind her hut, or biry it from a neigh- 
bor. Chopped cabbage, rice and onions, shining with fat, are not to be despised. 
There is also what we classify as a species of vegetable marrow, but shaped more 

like a cucumber, that, when shred into the 
pot, reminds us of the great vessel Elisha 
ordered his servant to 1 ' set on and seethe 
the pottage for the sons of the prophets. ' ' 

' ' And one went out into the field to 
gather herbs, and found a wild vine, and 
gathered thereof wild gourds his lapful and 
shred them into the pot of pottage; for they 
knew them not. ' ' 
I Rice is cooked far better by Martha than 

I by a majority of professional cooks with us. 
Every grain stands up for itself, and is fur- 
ther encouraged to independence by a coat- 
ing of olive oil or some kind of gravy. 
Seasoned with onion, and made more pleasing to the eye by bits of minced tomato, 
it is palatable and nourishing. 

The hostess stands aside, and bows, raising her hand to her forehead, then 
laying it upon her heart, inviting us to pass into her dwelling before her. The 
outer walls of heavy stones are laid in sun-dried clay, with which the inner walls 
are coated. The flat roof is supported by rough boards laid from side to side. 
Upon these is a layer of sticks and straw, and over these earth is spread to the 
depth of eight or ten inches, and beaten or rolled flat. As the winter rains come 
on, the covering of the house must be frequently — sometimes daily — inspected. A 
crack soon widens into a fissure. 

"By slothfulness the roof sinketh in, and through idleness of the hands, the 
house leaketh." 

The continual dropping in a rainy day is of muddy water, and the house- 
hold is fortunate if the whole superstructure of mud, twigs and boards does not 




BREAD-MAKING. 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



5i 



give way and overwhelm them, or drive them out into the windy storm and 
tempest. 

Out Martha is notable in her generation, and evidently expects us to admire 
the proofs of the quality offered by the interior of her abode. To appreciate her 
ingenuity, I must remark that the flooring of clay mixed with chopped straw or 
stubble is kneaded and spread by the women themselves, and that they keep the 
inner walls in repair by daubing them with the same mixture. When the floor is 
badly broken, or very foul from use, the house- wife cleans house by kneading a 
fresh supply of this untempered mortar and besmearing it anew. Martha has 
invented a process of combining her mortar with gum gathered laboriously from 
mountain-trees, which imparts a gloss to walls and floor. She has likewise 
smoothed the cement with a board instead of contenting herself with patting it 
level with hands and feet. The only attempt at decoration we have seen in the 
houses of the Eastern peasants is prominent in the ten-by-ten room in which we 
now stand. It is Martha's masterpiece and must be duly admired if one desires 
to secure a reputation for taste in the fine ar Is. Right in the middle of the room 
(which is the house) is a rude pillar, about as thick and high as a five o'clock tea- 
table, constructed of red clay hardened by gum, and really resembling red stone. 

Besides the door there are two small windows upon opposite sides of the apart- 
ment. The dead- wall facing us as we enter is the family store-room. The place 
of honor is given to the barrel of family flour (meal) . Upon the top is the knead- 
ing-trough, or pan, in which the dough is mixed and set to rise. A hole near the 
bottom of the barrel lets out the meal when it is needed for use, and is then plugged 
up with a rag. The sight corrects our pre-conceived ideas of the widow of Sar- 
epta's mode of getting the day's supply from her exhaustless barrel. We who 
have pictured her as leaning far over the edge, scraping up the flour from the 
echoing bottom, have lost the beauty and the significance of the miracle. The 
daily dole came from above, as will be seen, and she had no means of estimating 
how much or how little was left in the barrel, as she drove the plug back into 
place. 

The cruse of oil, by a pleasant coincidence, not of our contrivance, is near by 
on the floor, full-bodied and narrow-necked. If faithless, the widow might peer, 
but unsuccessfully, to guess how long she might depend upon the contents remain- 
ing in the bottom. 

I cannot leave the widow of Sarepta without relating a little incident that 
came to me the other day. A party of travelers and missionaries visiting Sarepta 
from Sidon on Thanksgiving day saw, just without what was once the gate of the 
city, " a woman gathering of sticks " to make a fire. 

The commonest event of the lowliest life in this country, so strange and yet 
so familiar to the Bible student, is an expressive commentary upon the Scriptures. 



5 2 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



As when, before coming indoors, Martha, perceiving that the fire of coals under 
the lentil-pot was nearly out, hastily rolled a bunch of dried grass into a wisp, 
tnrust it under the kettle, and as it smoked, persuasively blew it into a flame. 

" If God so clothe the grass of the fields, which to-day is, and to-morrow is 
cast into the oven." 

" Smoking flax shall he not quench." 

But to our store-room ; — Strings of onions and peppers hang from the ceiling; 
smaller barrels of rice and other commodities are in line with that holding the 
meal; jars, pots and kettles are upon these; a big pestle is suspended alongside of 
a miscellany of baskets, cloths and porringers, each of which has value in Martha's 
sight. Her cousin of Bethany would hasten to unroll a mat or rug for us to stand 
upon. It is not easy or convenient for country Martha to get woven matting, and 
rugs are a city luxury. We can see for ourselves that the broom of twigs set in 
house-wifely order, with the brush end uppermost, against the wall, has been in 
diligent use to-day. The floor, if hard, is smooth and clean, and her Bethany 
kinswoman could not offer with more cordial hospitality the cushions now brought 
forward for our accommodation. 

We dispose ourselves upon the cushions, my guide and instructor — Syrian by 
birth, American by education, pure womanly by nature, and earnest Christian by 
grace — with the ease acquired by years of practice, I more comfortably than before 
I began the round of visits that has engrossed me of late. The cushions are 
round, long, stuffed with hay, and covered with Turkey red cotton. While the 
gentle voice that lends itself musically even to Arabic goes on with friendly dis- 
course with the mistress of the home, I have opportunity — given me purposely — 
to inventory the furniture. 

I amuse myself with imaginations of how the wife of a New Jersey or Illinois 
day-laborer in steady employment would behave if introduced to this place as her 
abiding-place for the rest of her natural life. On two sides of the room runs a 
wide shelf of unplaned boards, elevated upon sticks about a foot from the earth 
which is the floor. On this is piled the family bedding in the shape of ' ' pallets ' ' — 
two breadths of cotton cloth run together at the edges, and wadded with hay, or 
cotton, or cloth, or rags, to the thickness of an inch or so. Upon one of the quilts 
the would-be sleeper will lie to-night when it is unfolded over the floor, and with 
another he or she will be covered, the nights being chilly at this season. Father, 
mother and five children will rest upon these pallets, laid as closely together as 
they can be put, and having known no other beds, their rest will be sweet in spite 
of the unyielding floor, the low ceiling and the stuffiness arising from seven pairs 
of lungs and seven unwashen bodies. Windows and doors will be closed, for the 
night-air is believed to be unwholesome. Martha would also ask in grave wonder- 
ment when she hears of the daily baths of her pale-faced visitors, if they ' c are not 



THE FIvAG OF THE ORIENT. 



53 



afraid of making themselves ill by so much washing?" She is neat and notable 
according to her lights, but illumination has never struck athwart the, to us, vital 
question of much soap and more water. 

Before judging her, I recall the reply made to me once by a New York woman 
who has thrown talents, energy — all that make up and abound in her grand per- 
sonality — into the work of elevating working- women to a higher plane of thought 
and living. 

"They might at least make themselves ' skin-clean,' " I heard said, "even 
if they have not time for keeping their poor rooms tidy. • Bathing costs little." 

"You might change your mind if you had to perform your ablutions in a 
quart of water, brought by hand — and a very 
tired hand ! — up four flights of rickety stairs, ' ' 
retorted the practical philanthropist. 

Every drop of the water used in Mar- 
tha's household is brought from the foun- 
tain in the village at the foot of the hill, and 
brought upon her shoulder in a huge jar of 
baked clay. The recreation she derives from 
gossip, friendly or mischievous, with other 
burden-bearers who there do congregate, 
hardly offsets the bodily fatigue of trudging 
up the steep and £tony path. Her husband 
stays his labor in tne threshing-floor and, 
leaning upon the ' ' fan ' ' in his hand, throws 
her a kindly word as she passes, the drip 
from the water- pot mingling with the sweat 
of her face. He is a model spouse, as Mos- 
lem spouses go, but he would no sooner 
think of offering to run up the hill with her 
load than Eleazar of Damascus thought of forestalling Rebekah in her hospitable 
task of "watering all his camels," after she had letdown her pitcher from her 
shoulder and given him to drink. 

As for her boys, she spoils them from the beginning, teaching them by 
object-lessons, if not by precept, the inferiority of her sex to theirs. Sooner 
than degrade them to the position of drawers of water, she would fetch and carry 
every hour of every day of all the days of her life. In due course of time they 
will marry and each bring his child-wife home for at least one year to be drilled 
in housework by her mother-in-law. Martha will get her "innings" then, and 
lives in hope of this consummation. 

To-morrow morning, she will hustle the laggards out of bed and out-of-doors, 





BROUGHT UPON HER SHOUI/DER. 



54 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



that she may roll up the beds and pack them upon the shelf. The cushions keep 
them company except when a visitor drops in, and besides these, there is abso- 
lutely no furniture in the house — neither table nor chair, nor a stool, nor anything 
bearing the faintest resemblance to a chest of drawers. The family wardrobe is 
upon their backs. If there are extra garments they are in sundry uncouth bundles 
and a couple of rough boxes tucked under a broad shelf and among the bedding. 
Her pots and kettles, jars and bowls, compose the "plenishing " of the home. 

' ' But when it rains, ' ' I ask, ' 1 where is the cooking done then ? ' ' 

Martha brings out a misshapen utensil of clay baked in the coals, which is 
enough like the braziers in use b}^ tinkers and solderers to make it recognizable as 
a receptacle for fire. She explains how this is set upon the pillar in the middle of 
the floor, a fire built within it, and what could be more satisfactory ? 

' ' Where does the smoke go ? ' ' 

A gesture replies — " Anywhere !" 

"And the children, who cannot run out of doors in the rain ?" 
She admits that they are troublesome in such circumstances, but it is the will 
of God that the rain falls, and she must make the best of it. 

I think of the five restless little beings, wild as hawks and wayward as the 
wind, and the curling smoke under the low rafters, and the dampened roof making 
dark the interior, and find the only light in the picture in the 
reflection that real winter and Syrian rains — violent deluges as I 
know them to be — last, as a rule, but two months a year. 

She will have few of the morning tasks to perform that render 
the day- dawning a bugbear to Occidental house- wives. 
When the mats are stowed away, a cup of coffee made 
for her husband and the children served with a cake of 
tough bread apiece, to be devoured when and where they 
please, the day may be said to be fairly upon its feet. Her 
husband has carried his luncheon to the field with him; 
the children will be nibbling all day long, but there will 
be no noon-day meal spread or cooked. It is surprising, 
by the way, what an amount of various trash those childish 
stomachs try to dispose of during the day. Besides the 
leathery cakes that are the chief of their diet, there are radishes in abundance 
— big, juicy roots — to be had for the pulling out of the ground, and raw turnips, 
and onions, and salads, and such homely sweets as the mother compounds. They 
run about with slices of cold, boiled beets in grimy fingers, devouring them as 
greedily as if they were candy, and chew and suck bits of purple sugar-cane, and there 
is a tall jar of ' 1 dips, ' ' — i. e. , grape-juice, boiled down to the consistency of treacle — 
in the corner of the house, to which resort is made when the mother's back is turned. 




IN THE THRESHING- 
FLOOR. 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



55 



Candidly, we cannot see what Martha can find to keep her as busy all day 
long as she assures us she is. That she believes herself overworked is evinced by 
the worried plaits between her eyes, as deep as the furrows plowed by ceaseless 
toil and care in the forehead of a New England farmeress. Yet this is the easy 
season among the dwellers upon Lebanon slopes, for the silk-worm work is over 
for the year, and the eggs that are to be hatched next spring are simply done up 
in bags and hung up in the church over yonder — less out of custom or superstition 
than because the eggs must be kept at an even temperature, and out of the chil- 
dren's way. For these ends there is no safer place than the church. All the 
neighbors thus utilize the sacred place, and the priest raises no objection. Martha 

does not know how she could --.-> 

pay the rent of her house and Wp 
keep the children clothed , but 
for the blessed worms. From 
the beginning of the season, 
when the eggs are disposed 
upon boards and hurdles in 
the hut, to the day when the 
last cocoon is completed, the 
family dwell in booths out- 
of-doors, leaving the quiet 
dwelling to the voracious 
feeders upon the mulberry 
leaves gathered fresh dairy 
for them. They eat the whole 
of the first crop; a second 
puts forth for the sheep. 

This last word is in the 
singular number in more 
than one sense of the adjec- 
tive, as our illustration will show. The oldest girl of the humble home has her 
hands full for some hours of each day in collecting food and literally stuffing it 
down the throat of the animal. It is tied, and could not get away if it would. 
Tt soon ceases to frisk and tug at the cord, and is as quiescent under treatment as 
the Strasbourg goosewhose feet are fast to a board, and whose liver distends abnor- 
mally in the attempt to digest the matter with which it is surfeited. The sheep 
belongs to a breed that has very broad tails. As he becomes first plump, then fat, 
then so unwieldy that he can hardly breathe, and does not offer to move, the tail 
grows to an enormous size, often weighing from thirty to forty pounds. To the 
day of his death, which must be a relief to the ponderous body, the stuffing is kept 





IT IS QUIESCENT UNDER TREATMENT." 



56 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



Up, and he must have consumed many times his weight in mulberry leaves. The 
horrified beholder marvels within his disgusted soul if the creature could not be spun 
into silk as well as the worms, which are monsters of gluttonness and corpulency. 

Of the skin, with the fleece on, Martha has made, about every fifth year, a coat 
for her husband, who sometimes has work further up the mountain in winter. If 




this be not worn out, 
she finds a ready mar- 
ket for wool and hide. 
Every morsel of the 
precious fat is treas- 
ured, ' ' tried out, ' ' and 
clarified, then poured 
into jars to harden, 
and used during the 
winter as butter. Few 
cows are kept by the 



peasants in the coun- 
try, none in towns. 
When milk must be 
' had, they get it from 
JH> goats, or buy from bet- 
> ter-off neighbors. All 
/ classes are fond of 
what is called ' ' leb- 
Kj ben," which is noth- 
ing more or less than 
} loppered milk, 

■ ' turned ' ' into firm 
blanc-mange-like con- 
sistency by adding to 

« ' HER TURF-ROOFED HUT. " sour milk & < l lebben ' ' 

left over from the previous day. This makes the delicacy more sharply acid than 
our loppered milk, or ' ' bonny clabber, ' ' as the Southerners name it. I have seen 
" lebben " passed with a dish of rice and meat at a hotel table, and eaten from the 
same plate as we would a vegetable or sauce. * 

The bones and meat of the valuable sheep are boiled until the flesh slips 
off easily, when it is cut into small pieces, seasoned well and packed into jars. 
Melted suet is "flowed" over the surface, and the jars are set in a cool, dry 
place. Except when a chicken is killed upon some great holiday, the family have 
no other meat than this as long as it lasts. 




THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



57 



Martha reckons fat of whatever kind as more valuable than lean meat, and, 
next to olive oil, the stored suet from her fatted sheep as most desirable. It is, 
really, sweeter and more delicate than could be imagined of " mutton- tallow," and 
should not be confounded with it. 

I have rated the thirty-two cents a day which represent the earnings of the 
head of this Syrian house as equal to a dollar-and-a-quarter or a dollar- and-a-half 
in United States currency. I am told by trustworthy authorities that this is a fair 
statement in view of the wide disparity between the customs of the two countries, 
as well as between the needs of the poorer classes here and in America. Martha 
does not need to lay in coal or wood, or to keep up fires night and day. Charcoal 
is cheap; sticks may be had for the gathering, and in the lower countries dried 
camels' -manure is sold at a trifling cost in the markets for fuel. The boys need 
no flannels, the girls no shoes, no bonnets or caps, there are no Sunday clothes, 
no bedsteads, bureaux, washstands, chairs, or even tables. 

Tea is an unknown luxury, and when she uses coffee, it is of the commonest 
sort. There is no striving to keep up appearances. So long as she lives as well 
as her fore-mothers and her acquaintances, and a little better than the majority of 
the last-named, she is content. Her world, to our eyes, may be typified by the 
compass of her turf-roofed hut, but it is all the world she knows, or is likely to 
know. 




CHAPTER IV. 



AN AFTERNOON CALL 




AVING due regard to the proprieties it is, perhaps, well that I should 
not state in which of the larger cities we have visited in Palestine and 
northern Syria I availed myself of the invitation through a friend to 
pay my respects to the wife of a wealthy citizen. In our wanderings 



we have come upon Boston, New York and Chicago newspapers in such unlikely 
places that we have grown timid in the use of the names of persons and well- 
known localities. Some people on this side of the Mediterranean (and on the 
thither side of the Atlantic) like to be written up. The sight of one's name in 
print infuses a grateful glow through the moral and mental system, and titillates 
the self-love which is the one mighty common attribute of humankind from pole to 
pole. Others shrink honestly from printed publicity, as from the touch of red-hot 
iron, even if the notice be laudatory. Nobody — and this is a rule without excep- 
tion — enjoys being made ridiculous in the sight of friends or strangers. 

In view of these things, the sketch of this one of my visits, if I would report 
everything as it happened, must go forth undated as to time and place. 

We were set down by our coachman at the mouth of a long, rather narrow 
passage or court, paved with rough stones, and neither light nor clean. In the 
United States, we should have considered it an unpromising entrance to a factory 
or warehouse. As the introduction to the abode of one who counts his wealth by 
millions of dollars, it was simply inexplicable to the mind of the average traveler 
from the sunset land. As strange seemed the four flights of stone stairs we climbed 
to reach the drawing-rooms. They were not even marble steps up which we toilec 
pantingly, but of the yellowish freestone in general use here for the better class 
of buildings. Staircases borrow new horrors (to those who have left youth and 
length of wind behind them) from the height of Oriental ceilings. It is not 
unusual to find these in private residences from twenty to twenty -five feet high, 
and each staircase conducting to the floor above is double and mercifully broken 
by a landing. Upon these landings we paused to gather breath and heart, until 
we beheld at the head of the eighth half-flight a maid in jacket and short skirt, a 
veil pinned over her black hair, awaiting us. Taking the right hand of each of 
us in turn with both of hers, and courtesy ing so deeply that one knee must have 
touched the floor, she raised the back of the hand, first to her lips, then to her 

(58) 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



61 



forehead, lastly to ner heart, and stepping back as she arose, motioned us to pre- 
cede her into an open door. A few steps w ithin the threshold of a spacious draw* 
ing-room we were met by the mistress of the house. She is a Circassian, married 
to a Turkish gentleman, and still bears traces of unusual beauty in her clearly- 
molded features, dark eyes and sweet smile. Her attire was a disappointment. 
I had expected Oriental magnificence and found Parisian simplicity in a pale-pink 
gown, trimmed modestly with native lace. Except that her wrists were loaded 
with bracelets and that the brooch at her throat was a superb emerald, the largest 
I ever saw, surrounded by diamonds, I should have sought vaimy for tokens of 
her nationality and her husband's wealth. She greeted us cordially, shaking 
hands as an Englishwoman might, and led us through the outermost and largest 
room of the suite to a smaller, where she waved us to arm-chairs. Two little girls, 
eight and ten years of age, were their mother's aides in making us welcome. 
Each bent her pretty head to kiss our hands, and each, unbidden unless by the 
mother's eye, hastened to fetch stools for our feet before withdrawing into the 
background. 

I could speak no Arabic : our hostess neither English nor French. We carried 
on a sort of three-cornered conversation that would have been droll enough to a 
listener, the trite nothings of polite society losing what little flavor they might 
have had at first hand (or mouth) in filtering from English into Arabic and back 
from Arabic to me in English. 

My initial observation that the afternoon had become suddenly warm was 
made in French under the impression that the handsome Circassian understood 
that tongue, and at her inquiring look, had to be " done ' ' into English that the 
interpreter might get hold of it. It was irresistibly funny, but we three kept 
straight faces and proceeded to pelt one another with cut-and-dried figures of 
speech, the little daughters regarding us with wide, grave eyes, and a maid, a 
straight, dark-eyed woman, a striking figure, standing in the a.ched doorway of 
the third drawing-room, never removed her gaze from the hands of her mistress. 
She had slipped off her sandals upon entering the parlor, and stood now in her 
white-stockinged feet upon the carpet. 

This carpet was another and a sharp disappointment. It was costly in mate- 
rial, but for pattern might have been selected by a rich vulgarian in Cincinnati or 
Denver. With the vision before me of certain Persian and Turkish rugs I had 
seen that day in a city bazaar, the soft harmony of whose colors was a dream of 
artistic perfection, I resented the glaring flowers ramping over about four hundred 
yards of white ground. Chairs and sofas from a Parisian upholsterer were pushed 
stiffly against the walls; satin curtains from the same establishment hung at the 
dozen windows. The bare walls were the only evidence of Moslem occupation of 
the vast rooms. 



62 



THE FlvAG OF THE ORIENT. 



I was beginning to weary of tasteless splendor that had in it hardly a touch 
of the Oriental element, when another maid, putting off her sandals at the entrance, 
ushered in two more visitors. They were introduced to us in due form as the wife 
and mother of the highest Turkish official in the city, and were evidently person- 
ages of importance. It presently transpired that they were to remain to dinner, 
That meal would be served at six o'clock, and it was now a little after four. 
Three maids removed the new visitors' hoods and wraps, and the wife of the Pasha 
accepted an arm-chair. Not so with her mother-in-law. Parisian innovations 
might catch the fancy of the younger generation, and turn aside the very elect 
from time-honored customs. She would none of them. A couple of maids has- 
tened under the mistress's direction to heap in one corner four red satin cushions, 
and, when the old woman had crossed her legs upon them, to place other cushions 
at her back. Thus established, she sighed satisnedly and smiled around the room. 
She supplied the ' ' Oriental element ' ' for which I had longed ! 

Answering the smile and nod bestowed upon me when she learned that I had 
made a three weeks' journey to see her, I took a mental photograph of her as 
Moslem and as mother-in-law. The East is the paradise of mothers-in-law, as I 
shall further demonstrate some day, and this particular specimen of a well-abused 
class magnified her office. It was plain that she considered herself the most impor- 
tant personage in the room. Her daughter-in-law was languid and looked sickly. 
Her sallow complexion showed to disadvantage against a Parisian gown of tan- 
colored stuff, with a vest of creamy silk; her heavy bracelets hung upon her lean- 
wrists like handcuffs; her head was bare, and her hair negligently arranged. 
After her mother-in-law had interrupted her several times in the middle of a. 
remark indolently uttered in the Turkish dialect, she became silent, leaned back 
in her arm-chair and lighted a cigarette. A silver stand of cigarettes and matches 
was brought in just before her arrival. 

The "Oriental element" was clad in yellow silk trousers, white silk stock- 
ings and yellow slippers, as her attitude allowed us ample opportunities for observ- 
ing. Above these was a long shapeless sacque of fawn-colored silk, quilted in- 
perpendicular rows. If she had selected color and pattern with an eye to heighten- 
ing her native homeliness, her success was perfect. The sacque was large in the 
neck and revealed the dingy wrinkles of the throat. A big diamond on one hand 
and a ruby upon the other called attention to the thick, yellowish fingers, when 
she clasped her hands below one knee and swayed gently back and forth. Her 
head was bound about with a white turban, or loose cap, below which escaped 
stray gray locks; she had but three teeth, and her lower lip hung loosely. I could 
compare her to nothing but the hag of childish nightmares and the wicked fairy 
of folk-lore. Yet she laughed benevolently when the pretty little girls approached 
her and bowed to kiss her veinous hand, and patted them on the head, muttering: 
what sounded like an incantation, and was probably a blessing. 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



Small gilded tables were now brought in, and upon them were set in array a 
Sevres tea-sendee, and silver baskets of biscuits and cakes. The hostess poured 
out the tea, through a silver tea-strainer — precisely as an American woman serves 
it on her ' ' At Home ' ' afternoon ; the maids passed the refreshments to the guests. 
The ' ' Oriental element ' ' refused the foreign beverage with an imperious wave of 
the hand, and looked on rebukingly. 

But the oddest performance was still in store for my unaccustomed eyes. As 
the bell in a neighboring tower struck five, the old lady scrambled to her feet like 
a cat, and without uttering a word, waddled into the third room of the suite. 
The black-eyed maid who stood, statue-like, in the doorway, followed her, and the 
hostess, with no sign of surprise, excused herself to us with a slight bend of the 
head, and went, as we supposed, to see what it all meant. In my Western igno- 
rance, I supposed that the ' ' Oriental element ' ' meditated a nap upon the luxu- 
rious divan visible through the wide arch, and when the maid dragged out a rug 
from beneath the cushioned lounge, was puzzled by seeing her lay it in the exact 
middle of the apartment. The hostess now produced from the drawer of a cabinet 
a long white scarf of some thin tissue, and offered it to the " Oriental element." 
Stepping upon the oblong bit of carpeting which I now saw was what buyers of 
eastern stuffs know as a " pray er-rug, ' ' the crone wrapped the scarf over her head 
and across her forehead and chin, after the manner of a veil, and folding her 
hands, first upon her chest, then upon her forehead, raised them and her eyes 
toward the ceiling. 

The maid resumed her station in the doorway, her dark face as immobile as 
the Egyptian Sphinx, her eyes again directed to the hands of her mistress, who 
came back to us, saying tranquilly in Arabic: 

" Madame wishes to pray !" 

I bent my head involuntarily, feeling and courtesy dictating some token of 
respect to an act of devotion, but the daughter-in-law took a fresh cigarette and a 
handful of sweets from a basket near by, and with the air of one temporarily 
relieved from an irksome presence, began a lively chat with the lady of the house, 
into which my friend and interpreter was speedily drawn. While the talk pro- 
ceeded, I watched furtively, but closely, the proceedings in the adjoining room. 
It was one of the five times a day in which the devout Moslem must pray with his 
face toward Mecca. I have been informed since that it is unusual to see a woman 
Moslem at her devotions, although in this part of Syria the faithful of the other 
sex drop spade, trowel, paint-brush, chisel, awl, plow, even knife and fork, at 
the appointed season and prostrate themselves as commanded by the Koran. But 
this particular specimen of the 4 'Oriental element," obviously differing from St. 
Paul as to the profitableness of bodily exercise, went through the various stages 
of her orisons with a swing and energy worthy ofthe most stalwart follower of the 



6 4 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



Prophet. She bowed seven times toward the holy city, at an angle her apparent 
infirmity would seem to make impossible; she lifted eyes and clasped hands times 
without number, and finally went down upon her knees on the prayer-rug, and 
bumped her head hard upon the spot indicated by the pattern as the proper and 
edifying point where the faithful forehead should strike. She was still in this atti- 
tude, her covered head rising and falling with the regularity of an automatic toy, 
when we took our leave. The performance, so extraordinary to us, was of no 
moment whatever to her fellow- religionists. Their gossip went on more smoothly 
for her absence; their voices were not lowered by so much as a semi-tone. Unless 
deafened by religious ecstasy, she must have heard every word. The hostess 
offered no excuse or explanation. Attending us to the outer door of the drawing- 
room, she thanked us for the honor we had done her by calling, and hoped that we 
would repeat our visit, then went back to the Pasha-ess, who was helping herself 
to a third cigarette. The little daughters kissed our hands, and raised them to 
their foreheads, the three maids courtesied low to us from their several stations; 
our last glimpse of the ' ' Oriental element ' ' showed her still prostrate, and still 
smiting the prescribed spot of the prayer-rug with her forehead. 

The fair Circassian is her husband's only wife, and they have, as we have 
seen, advanced ideas upon the subject of housekeeping and the entertainment of 
visitors. Their daughters have a governess — a Parisian — and the sons a tutor. 
But with the exception of her husband, not a man enters her presence. There 
was a queer sensation in sitting in social converse with three women whose lives 
were so rigorously divided from what, in our own land, brings variety and spirit 
into homes and society — the frank and gracious association of the sexes. 

Woman may be said to supply the sugar- and- water at such entertainments, 
and some people, notably the French, enjoy ' ' eau sucre." The American palate — * 
and constitution — give the preference to lemonade. 



CHAPTER V. 



A SYRIAN BABY. 

OHREE months before our call the news that a birth was impending 
drew about the one-roomed hut in which parents and three children 
already lived, a crowd of friendly neighbors. Outside, the men 
smoked and talked with the father to while away the period of 
suspense. Within, their wives thronged the chamber to suffocation, also smoking 
and talking, all at once. The mother lay upon a mat at the far side of the floor, 
with just enough room between her and the wall to allow the passage of the 
loudly-officious matrons who hovered about her. 

Dr. William Gray Schauffler, the beloved physician to many natives in Beirut, 
once told me how he had charged into the midst of such a rabble, upon being 
called to take charge of " a dangerous case." 

" There were fifty women in a twelve-by-twelve room," he said. "The air 
was stifling; the hubbub indescribable. I wasted no words. Two strong sentences 
in Arabic, with gestures to match, sent them scurrying to the door, and I could at 
least see the patient." 

When the sex of our particular baby was reluctantly announced, there was a 
general falling away of solicitous friends. A dead silence followed the unwelcome 
phrase — accentuated, presently, by the groans of the nearest of feminine kindred 
and the sobs of the poor mother. The men emptied their pipes upon the ground 
and stalked off, mercifully forbearing to look at the father, disgraced by the 
appearance of still another daughter. 

The women departed in like manner, without speaking to him, or to his 
wife. Often the husband approaches the mat upon which the unhappy woman is 
left alone with her new-born child, and scolds her vehemently for the disappoint- 
ment she has caused him. Sometimes he actually strikes her in his fury. My 
guide told me of one instance that had come under her personal observation in which 
the mother had beaten her head and breast with her fists in a frenzied attempt to 
commit suicide. Life under the shame that had come to her was insupportable. 

Had our baby been a boy, a turmoil of congratulations would have ensued 
upon the proclamation at the door of the hut. The happy father would have been 
embraced with tears of joy by his comrades, drums would have been beaten and 
5 (65) 



66 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



trumpets blown, and such humble gifts as the poor can make to one another been sent 
in to the mother, already overwhelmed by the caresses and praises of her gossips. 
The little intruder upon a domestic circle and community thus organized had 
had few visitors and no presents when we made our call. 




A SYRIAN MOTHER AND HER CHII,D. 

" I wish," said an indignant woman-missionary, ' 1 that not another girl would 
be born to you Syrians for half a century, that you might know the real value of 
woman in the world !" 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



67 



The cradle of roughly-cut, unpainted wood stood in the middle of the floor. 
Upon slats nailed over the tall rockers was tacked a mattress stuffed with straw. 
Directly upon this, the child, clad in a single calico garment, was strapped by 
means of strips of cotton cloth, six inches in width, attached to the framework of 
the cradle. The only pillow was placed exactly beneath the shoulder-blades, the 
head sagging forlornly upon the lower level of the mattress. The baby's arms 
were laid close to its sides, its legs were stretched as straight as though the bed 
were its coffin; a sort of " duvet " — or quilt — was spread above it, and over all the 
straps were passed, smooth and level, under the slats and up again on the other 
side, to be tied with tape strings to a rude framework above the head of the tiny 
mummy. She could not stir finger or foot, or roll over by so much as a quarter- 
inch of space. When she cried, the mother knelt upon the floor and nursed her. 

"She does not like it — no !" she answered, smiling at the query whether or 
not the baby relished the strapping process. 

Nevertheless, whenever the small prisoner cries, it is assumed that she is 
hungry and whatever the mother is doing, she leaves everything to feed her. The 
custom of regular meal-time practiced by most intelligent mothers and nurses in 
America and England is considered barbarous. 

"But it may be that the mothers in those countries do not pity the poor little 
things as we do?" said our hostess, tentative, but courteous., as she responded for 
the third time within half-an-hour to her nurseling's fretful appeal. 

It stopped whining when she lifted it to display the construction of the 
cradle and the ni} T steries of the long strips of cloth, depositing the late occu- 
pant upon the mat beside her. The brown legs were kicked eagerly into 
the air, the arms tossed wildly in true baby-style, and the gurgling coo which 
is the natural language of infantile humanity the world around testified to its 
relief and pleasure. A four-year-old sister laughed gleefully in reply, and grab- 
bing the baby, hitched it up to her hip in Syrian fashion, the tiny head wobbling 
frightfully. 

"She will surely drop it !" gasped I, with a glance at the pitiless floor, a 
concrete of clay and stones. 

The mother smiled; the interpreter reassured me. 

" Oh ! the older children carry the babies — when they are carried — from 
their birth, even when just able to toddle about themselves. She has probably- 
had that little one in her arms four or five times a day, ever since it was born. 
The boys never touch them, of course. The girls are burden-bearers from the 
first." 

The baby's head was already one-sided, the soft skull yielding readily to the 
pressure of the straw mattress. For twenty hours out of twenty-four it is bound 
down in the way I have described, and as the mother always kneels on the 



68 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



right-hand side of the cradle to nurse it, the head is habitually turnea in that 
direction. 

' ' There is hardly one well-shaped skull among the hundreds of Syrian boys 
and men in our preparatory school and college," said one of the Beirut professors 
to me. ' ' They are all flattened at the back, or on the side, before the first year 

of infancy is over. 
They wear the fez 
indoors and out. 
When it is removed 
the deformity is 
seen." 

If the effect of 
the much-dreaded 
evil eye be, as is sup- 
posed, a mysterious 
wasting away of flesh 
and loss of vigor, 
some former visitor 
may have exercised 
it upon another wee 
creature in a swing- 
ing cot. She was so 
fragile in frame, so 
ethereal in her pale 
prettiness, that I 
asked out of the full- 
ness of common- 
sensible experience 
and observation 
upon what diet she 
was fed. 

" She is not yet 
weaned," was the 
unexpected answer, 
' ' but she eats any- 
thing, potatoes, garlic, radishes, green almonds, cucumbers, bananas, cactus-figs" 
—the fruit of the wild prickly pear that flourishes rankly every where— ' c every- 
thing in fact, that people grown like. Why not ? she has twelve teeth." 

While talking, the mother— a Druse— squatted upon the bare floor, having 
laid cushions for us. She was comely with her black eyes, white teeth and ready 




THE HOUSE IN JOPPA SAID TO BE THAT OF SIMON THE TANNER. 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



69 



smile. Her dress consisted of pink calico trousers, very wide and full, a short 
jacket of the same material, of a deeper red, and a veil of coarse white cotton, 
pinned tightly around her forehead and falling down her back. The sale of red 
calico of every conceivable shade must be immense in this country, almost as 
large as that of the blue cloth of which the men's jackets and trousers are made. 
While we chatted of the baby, a third was brought upon the scene, of course in 
the arms of an older sister. Few of the babies I have seen are plump, and fewer 
are robust with the rollicking elasticity of muscle and joints manifest in healthy 
American babies. Yet the much-decried " state of artificial civilization " is as far 
removed from them as if they were creatures of a different genus from our rosy, 
well-fed darlings. Those who advocate bringing up children in absolute obedience 
to natural laws and instincts would have few suggestions to offer to the Syrian 
mother, except in the matter of binding her baby in the cradle. As soon as he can 
creep, he is tossed upon the bosom of Mother Earth, and left to "hustle" for 
himself among his fellows. When drowsy, he crawls into a corner and goes to 
sleep like a little brown dog; if hungry, he eats whatever comes within reach of 
his dirty hands that commends itself to his judgment as possibly eatable. At 
night, he huddles down, in the one garment he has worn all day, close to brothers 
and sisters, to gain warmth through the sunless hours from their bodies. 

When his mother is in a good humor she strokes and pats him and flings a fig 
or morsel of sweet cake to him; when she is busy, she kicks him out of her path; 
when angry — and this is often with the ignorant, untrained woman who was 
married ai twelve years of age — she takes a stick to him and swears volubly, 
cursing the day in which he was born and invoking the vengeance of heaven upon 
his undutiful soul. The immature soul that, in this state of nature and natural 
development, gets even less washing than his body ! 

" How clean your baby looks !" said my guide to the mother of still another 
baby. 

It was a boy, and almost the only infant we had seen whose skin was clear, 
and whose hair had the appearance of growing upon a healthy scalp. The proud 
parent showed her white teeth .in a gleam of childish gratification. 

"Yes! He should be clean. He had his first bath to-day. He is four 
months old, quite old enough to be taken to the baths." 

Home washing is an unknown luxury. Four times in a year, parents and 
children treat themselves to a plunge at the public baths, where a cleansing 
can be had for an absurdly small sum. For three months thereafter, soap and 
towels, comb and brush — belonging to the ' ■ state of artificial civilization ' ' — have 
no place in the unsophisticated household. While we still sat about the swinging 
cradle, the rush of naked feet was heard, and three little girls from five to ten 
years of age halted upon the threshold at sight of the clean new matting the 



7° 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



mother had unrolled at our entrance, and, one after the other, stepped into an 
earthen bowl of dirty water standing outside, dabbled their toes in it, rubbed one 
bare foot hastily over the other and entered. They left wet tracks upon the 
uncovered strip of concrete flooring, and muddy marks upon the ' ' company ' ' 
matting, but complacent in the conviction that they had done all which decency 
and etiquette demanded, they tucked their dripping feet under them, and composed 
themselves to get their share of the enjoyment of our visit. Of the unmarried girl 
of Northern Syria and Palestine I will talk at some future day. 



CHAPTER VI. 



IN DAVID'S CAMP. 

"As when the weary traveler gains 

The height of some o'erlooking hill, 
His heart revives, if 'cross the plains, 

He sees his home, though distant still." 

I REPEAT the lines, wistfully, from a "height " so lofty and crowning a 
descent so steep that all have alighted from their horses to walk down. 
David Jamal has lifted his hand to point down the valley lying at the 
foot of the range : 

" There is our camp !" 
According to custom, the mule-train was sent on early this morning to make 
all ready for our coming. The little encampment is always a goodly sight. It 
was never more inviting than as we see it now, nestled among olive trees and 
backed by a green plain. We give hardly a glance to the range beyond, which 
must be passed to-morrow. Visions of precipitous defiles and sudden " drops " in 
the road, and hills full of rolling stones, to me most formidable of all, where the 
formula, " I believe I will walk up this !" excites the good-humored smiles of the 
escort — none of these things mar the pleasure which warms our hearts at the first 
glimpse of the white tents that, by now, mean home to the wanderers. We walk 
cheerily down the rugged slope, and more cheerily traverse the stony level at the 
bottom, a river in the rainy season, and now filled with pebbles and boulders 
brought down by the freshets; blithely we climb the knoll on which smiles our 
encampment. 

David and the Bedouin sheik, who is our safe conduct through the country, 
have spurred forward, and the former stands ready to lift me down at the door of 
" the lady's tent." Within, water and towels await me, and a bed as comfortable 
as I have found in any hotel, should I care to rest until " afternoon tea " is served. 
By David's wise management, we are seldom, if ever, too late in arriving for this 
refreshment. By the time I have washed face and hands, and brushed my hair 
and garments, Imbarak, tall and serene, has set the tray in order, our camp- 
chairs beside it, and awaits further orders. The tea is swallowed and our hearts 
are revived into actual joyousness. 

(72) 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



73 



" The jolliest life in the world !" sighs Alcides, in blissful content. " Don't 
get out your note-book. It is enough to be alive on an evening like this — and 
here!" 

We never weary of the incidents and scenes of camp-life and continually discern 

new and picturesque 
features in it. Oppo- 
site the door of my 
tent is the luncheon- 
booth, different in 
shape from the rest, 
with an awning above 
the entrance, never 
let down to close up 
the interior, except 
when rain overtakes 
us on the road, for it 
accompanies us 
everywhere, and is 
the only tent pitched 
at noon. Like the 
others, it is lined with 
a vari-colored fabric 
of Cairene needle- 
work, the outside be- 
ing waterproof and 
"wind-tight." To 
the right, as we sit, 
yawns the cooking- 
tent. In fine weather, 
the construction — I 
cannot dignify it by 
the name of ' ' range ' ' 
— stands outside. It 
is a series of holes 

with a slight sheet of iron built about them, and each glows with a charcoal fire. At 
this hour, the cook — Johannes, — Johanen (" Yohanen ") — or, as we prefer to know 
him, plain John — presides over these craters, like a burly priest above sacrificial fires. 
Before I had learned wisdom by experience, I used to watch doubtfully processes 
so unlike any other methods of cookery with which I was acquainted as to waken 
apprehensions as to the outcome. That, without other utensils than two or three 




THRUST THEM INTO THE INNER PRISON AND MADE THEIR 
FEET FAST IN THE STOCKS." 



74 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



pots, a couple of kettles, a frying-pan, a gridiron, a chopping-tray and knife, and 
a few spoons, he could get up a decent meal, might well tax the credulity of a 
Middle States housewife. That from the enchanted craters or retorts will be sent 
to our table, at six o'clock, a six-course dinner, as well-cooked and as daintily gar- 
nished and served as if furnished by Delmonico's chef, is a fact stated upon the au- 
thority of all who have partaken of these magical repasts. Excellent soup is the first 
course; two dishes of meat, always 
chickens or partridges, a ' ' made 
dish" or entree, salad, pudding, 
or tart or custard or blanc mange, 
fruit, nuts and raisins and black 
coffee — is a bill of fare that repre- 
sents our every-day family dinner. 
When a holiday intervenes, or dis- 
tinguished guests are expected — 
ah, then, John of the many names 
buckles on his armor of proof and 
spreads a table in the wilderness 
that would have made David the 
Royal open his eyes in amazed 
delight. 

Next to the kitchen comes the 
dining-tent, furnished with table, 
and jointed or camp-chairs of 
Jamal's own design, having each 
four stout legs, perpendicular and 
trustworthy, and a good back of its 
own. Besides these, are camp-stools 
that may be used as foot-rests, 
and steamer-chairs or lounging- 
chairs for lazy and weary hours. The table furniture is that of an elegantly ap- 
pointed home; the invariable brightness of the silver is a despair to one house- 
wife who, after many years of patient effort, confesses herself unequal to the 
task of training hirelings to keep urn and teapot and spoons up to looking-glass 
lustre. 

Imbarak dwarfs the tent every time he enters by his slim altitude of six-feet- 
three. He serves each course faithfully, omitting not one jot or tittle of the waiter's 
duty, and moves like a long-drawn-out shadow. 

The number of sleeping-tents is regulated by the size and material of the party. 
That allotted to the only lady of the present company is in nothing more luxurious 




THKRK IS OUR CAMP." 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



75 



than that occupied by Alcides. It is spacious, and I can stand upright in any 
part of it. On one side is a dressing-table and behind it hangs a mirror. The 
cot-bed is most comfortable, supplied with feather pillows, clean linen, white 
counterpane and warm blankets. The floor, of earth beaten hard and smooth, has 
two coverings of carpet, the uppermost being Oriental rugs, soft and pretty. The 
polished pole in the centre is set about with hooks and rings on which wraps and 
extra clothing are hung. 

I am the more explicit as to the details of our present abode because of letters 




INTERIOR OF A HOUSE IN DAMASCUS. 



lately received from friends over the sea, sympathizing with me in the hardships 
of camp-life, and fearing that I may be permanently injured by the experience. 
One dear friend writes: 

"I cannot express my admiration of your courage in undertaking to dwell in tents fot 
whole nights together. It is well enough for men, especially the young and healthy. For 
women, and those who are — well ! to say the least, not as young as they once were — it is, to my 
way of thinking, imprudent and hazardous." 



7 6 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



There are hundreds in America who would echo her sentiments, who, but for 
dread of the difficulty and discomfort attending Palestine camp-life, would gladly 
extend their journey ings to the oldest and most interesting of lands. For the 
benefit of such, I am describing our encampment just as I see it, this hour. In 
rainy weather, if we are caught abroad, we find our quarters snug and dry, if 
somewhat confined as to sitting room space. If the torrents are heavy, trenches 
are dug about the tent to lead the water off. The floors never become wet. 

Dinner over — and we discuss it as leisurely as we like, time being no object 
in the evening — our lounging chairs are set — if the night be dry — without my tent 
door. To our left, the mules, eight or ten 
in number, and the horses, are pitched on 
the extreme verge of the encampment. 
Nearer to us, the muleteers, "the boy," 
(of thirty or thereabouts, whose name ought 
to be spelled as it is pronounced — but prob- 
ably is not — "Serkeese,") and the grave- 
eyed, gentle-voiced sheik (pronounced 
* 1 Shake/') sit upon the earth about the 
camp-fire, where they will sleep to-night. 
We wish vainly for an artist, or for a 
camera warranted to report by firelight, 
that might preserve for us the picture made 
by the unconscious group. The red light 
flames fitfully upon the bearded faces 
framed by the silken handkerchiefs (kafee- 
yahs) wound over their caps and under 
their chins, touching the gilt embroidery 
of the sheik's vest and the butt of his 
sword, bringing out the red scarf of one 
man, the yellow " kafeeyah " of another, 
and showing the intent eyes fastened upon 
the narrator. serkeese. 

We call up David to translate a few sentences of the story. He laughs in 
indulgent amusement at seeing that Serkeese is the speaker, and bends an atten- 
tive ear to the tale. It is, we learn presently, a story of a Sultan's son and a fairy 
who is enraged because he has broken her water-jar. "I cannot punish you 
because you are the son of my Sultan," she says, " but you shall fall in love with 
a beautiful woman who lives seven mountains away." 

"It is a scene right out of the Arabian Nights !" cries Alcides, delightedly, 
and we fall anew to watching the countenances of the auditors. 




THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



77 



Serkeese uses his hands freely as he goes on; sometimes he is very animated; 
the attention of the listeners never wanders from him; now and then a low 
exclamation evinces the feeling aroused by the simple — to us childish — recital of 
love and adventures, of dangers many and miraculous deliverances. Men fifty 
years old will hang upon the utterance of such until midnight; occasionally they 
hearken immovable all night long. 

We have our own talk in the dimly-lighted background, while the bands of 
Orion glitter in the zenith and the nebulous glow of the Pleiades brightens in the 
darkening night, and the sacred mountains keep watch and ward upon the hori- 
zon. Often we ask David to join us and tell us stories of real life; of Bedouin 
prowess and Bedouin thievery; of Arab love and Arab murders; of Moslem 
manners and customs and superstitions. He has them all at his tongue's end, 
and if urged will give us, less freely, incidents of his own early adventures, when 
travel in the Holy Land was another name for peril, It was not possible, then, 
for foreigners — or natives, for that matter — to go from Dan to Beersheba with no 
other protection than a mounted sheik as a pledge of nomadic tribes that all is 
right, and, according to their tribal code, lawful. Armed men by the score 
attended the travelers, and attack, in certain regions, might be expected at any 
instant. 

' ' What has made the change ?" we ask him. 
The loyal Syrian draws himself up proudly, 
' ' The present Government, madame !' ' 
We laugh, having anticipated the reply. 

" Why, David, you will convince us, by and by, that your Sultan is a pretty 
good sort of a fellow." 

" We never had a better ruler, madame. Look at the improvement in our 
roads, and how it is so much safer to go from place to place, and what he is doing 
for the poor. He is most merciful and tender-hearted, moreover. He has given 
from his own purse twenty thousand pounds toward rebuilding the mosque that 
was burned at Damascus. 

"Then, too, there is Abraham Hakee Pasha, Governor of Jerusalem, who 
gives much attention to the condition of the city and the poor and needy. A very 
just and upright man in all his dealings. And El-Haj Saleem-Effendi-el-Husane, 
head of the municipality of Jerusalem, gives all facilities for the welfare and 
comfort of the inhabitants. A noble gentleman is he. His parents are of the 
oldest house in Jerusalem. I cannot but speak well of our rulers and governors, 
madame. They are doing their best for us. And madame must see that there is 
much to be done." 

He is so much in earnest that we refrain from expressing our gratification that 
the sheik of the neighboring village has sent a guard to patrol our camp to-night. 



7 8 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



Whenever it can be done, the encampment is within a few minutes' walk of a ham- 
let or town, whence a guard of two men is drawn to be guarantee to the govern- 
ment for the safety of the travelers. So secure does this precaution make us that 
we lay us down to sleep as tranquilly as if we were behind walls and bolts at 
home. If additional surety were required, we have the knowledge that David 
Jamal makes the rounds in person twice during the dark hours to assure his faith- 
ful soul that all is well with his charges. I have never slept more soundly and 




DR. YOSEPH SURROUNDED BY A GROUP OF PERSIAN PEASANT WOMEN. 



healthfully than in his tents. If we awake once in a while to hear the queer cry 
of jackals over their prey, or are startled by the weird laugh of a hyena and the 
bark of a wolf, we smile at the oddity of the situation and turn us again to our 
pillows with renewed consciousness of safety in our guarded nest. 

Morning comes all too soon. Usually, the first knowledge we have of the 
return of the light is brought through the scratch that serves as a knock at the 
door of the tent, and the civil sentence in Arabic that signifies " hot water " in 
English. The smoking can for our toilet stands at the entrance. 

No refinement of civilization that thought and pains can secure is lacking. 
Ours is the universal continental breakfast, also in vogue at the East — coffee and 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 79 

tea, bread and butter, eggs in some form, and marmalade, honey or jam. While 
we eat it, all the tents except that in which we sit are quietly " struck" and 
packed. When we come out, horses and men are ready, and the gravely-courte- 
ous morning salutation of our dragoman is coupled with the reverent, — "By 
God's will we will see " such-and-such a place " before the sun sets again." 

The sheik swings into his saddle, and leads the way in the direction taken by 
the mule-train; Massoud, the wiry gray ridden by Alcides, curvets and kicks like 
a merry colt in falling into line; Serkeese rides briskly by, a grotesque figure upon 
biz pci^h atop of the roll of luncheon booth and hampers; before we have gone a 
hundred yards, David, who has tarried to issue a parting order to the three men 
engaged in clearing up the debris of the camp, gallops to my side, his mettled 
charger, Dervish, brave with embroidered saddle-cloth and fringed housings, and 
we are fairly started on the march. 



CHAPTER VII. 



THE NATIVE GIRL. 

HT my first interview with her, I, for awhile, mistook her for a boy. 
She sat flat upon the floor, her legs crossed undei her and her head 
uncovered. Her body was clothed in a pair of cotton trousers, and 
a blouse of the same, belted at the waist. Besides these, she had on 
not another garment. Her eyes were black, her face expressive; her gestures 
were animated, and she talked a great deal. She was, apparently, about ten 
years old, and well-grown for her age. 

" A lively little fellow !" said I to my interpreter, after watching her for some 
amused minutes. 

"She is a girl, and the terror of the neighborhood," was the rejoinder. 
' 1 One who in your country would be a brilliant woman in time, maybe, with 
progressive ideas. Here — poor child !" 

It was needless to finish the sentence. I knew enough already of the life of 
a girl in the Bast to be able to lay in the shadows of the scene. 

" Can she read?" I asked. 

' 4 Not a word — and never will know her letters. ' ' 
" What training has she in housework ?" 

" None. Her mother will tell you that she is lazy. She carried the baby — 
there is usually one every year — until a younger sister was big enough to shoulder 
the load. Then our little friend here ' struck ' playing nursery-maid. She cannot 
sew a stitch, or knit, or cook, or wash, or iron. She runs wild all day long; she 
can out-swear her brothers — and there is nothing that should be hidden from a 
young girl that she has not known since she was four years old." 

The speaker was gentle of speech and of judgment, but I was inclined to 
hope that she was severe upon the subject of the unflattering sketch. Subse- 
quently I learned to know Lala well, and recognized the fidelity of the por- 
traiture. 

I have told how unwelcome our baby girl was when she first made herself 
heard in the one-roomed abode of her wedded parents. It is doubtful if Lala's 
father has ever given her an affectionate word. If not actively unkind to her, he 
submits to her presence in his household as an inevitable disgrace. It matters 
less than nothing to him that she grows up like a weed, or like a "tramp " dog 
or cat. If passably good-looking, she will be married soon and out of his way. 

l8o) 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



8s 



She stands within sight of me as I pen these lines. To be fleshy is considered 
an attraction in a woman by her countrymen, but Lala (Lai-la) is as yet slim. 
She is also straight and well-formed, in spite of the circumstance that the eight- 
months-old brother she carries upon her hip, encircled by her arm, is her charge 
when out of the cradle. Upon the back of her head is pinned a white veil- 
cotton and coarse. This she has been compelled to wear in the street from her 
eighth year. Seeing mere babies with veils on, which they coquettishly pulled 




MRS. DAVID JAMAI/S " INDUSTRIAL CLASS " OF SYRIAN GIRDS. 



over their faces at meeting men or strange boys, I for some time supposed that 
they were worn of choice, as little girls with us masquerade in grown people's 
clothes. I discovered later that every prudent Moslem mother insists upon thus 
early investing her daughter with the badge of womanhood. When we come to 
comprehend what womanhood is in this land, we feel that the badge should be 
crape or sackcloth. 

1 ' Do you love your little brother, Lala ?' ' is the beginning of my dialogue 
with her. 

She laughs — the childish, half-bashful, half-pleased laugh one often hears here 
from the mother of several children — women who never mature in intellect 
6 



82 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



and whose physical maturty is that of summer fruit that has a worm at the 
core. 

" I don't know." 
" Is he heavy?" 

" Oh, a little — sometimes," indifferently. 
" How old is he?" 

She looks at him, as if the thought were new, and laughs again. 
"I don't know." 

"What do you do with yourself when he is in the cradle ?" 
She nods backward at the door. ' 1 Go out into the street. ' ' 
"To school ?" 

This is the funniest idea of all, and makes her shake her head many times. 

"No! no!" 

" Can you sew?" 

She lifts one brown hand, shapely and slender, v/e observe, and seems to 
examine it with infantile curiosity. 

" No !" is the result uttered slowly. 

" How should she?" says the interpreter aside — that is, in English. "Her 
mother does not know how to use a needle. Poor as she is, she hires a sewing- 
woman even to do what family-mending is absolutely needed." 

As I jot down the reply, Lala, having given the baby to his mother to be 
nursed, sinks upon the matting beside me, and fingers lightly, first my sleeve, 
then the skirt of my dress, which has a band of fur on the bottom. I cannot but 
smile into the child-face. I now perceive that it is comely, and would be intelli- 
gent had the brain back of it ever been awakened. I lay my hand upon the 
inquisitive, yet respectful fingers, as they pass to my stockings. 

" Would you like to wear shoes and stockings, Lala?" 

She laughs three or four times, and nods twice as often, then explains com- 
placently that when she is a bride she will have a pair of stockings — perhaps 
several pairs — and sandals, besides other fine things — new gowns and bracelets — 
holding out slender wrists encircled by strings of beads, blue and white. 

The word "bride" is talismanic. When a baby-girl falls down, or hurts 
herself in any wa3^, the mother or neighbor checks her lamentations by calling her 
"little bride," as nurses in America "fie-fie" their charges with "Little ladies 
ought not to cry!" If the mother would cajole the unruly daughter she has 
never controlled by reasoning, she wheedles her with, "Come now, little bride, 
do so and so." Her narrow, pitifully starved life has but one ambition — to be 
married. She knows no other game than playing "bride," when her hair is 
dressed with flowers, herself covered with a veil, and a play-fellow takes the part 
of bridegroom. For this end she was created and has breath and being. I put 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



83 



up notebook and pencil and look at her, as she is — a type of tens of thousands in 
this so-called Holy Land — in the sight of women who have, all their lives (as have 
their mothers and great- great- grandmothers before them), enjoyed the gifts of 
Christianity to our sex without appreciating the depth and height, the length and 
breadth, the unspeakable value of what we owe to it — with pity for the ignorance 
I cannot enlighten, the degradation which nothing but the religion of the Christ 
who humbled himself to be born of a woman among the Bethlehem hills over 
yonder can relieve. 

Hampered as I am by the absolute impossibility of putting into print that 
which might make the very paper on which I write blush for shame, I writhe, as 
in bondage, because our wisest and best American Christians are not familiar with 
sc much as the general features of a woman's life here and elsewhere in Eastern 
countries. What I cannot write, and what you, my sisters, would not let your 
daughters read, is a part — and a large part — of the everyday life going on under 
my eyes. Our home-missionaries see much of what is popularly termed ",the 
seamy side ' ' of human living. The missionary in the foreign field might cry out 
in bitter disgust of spirit that he sees nothing but seams, and darns, and patches 
in garments stiff with filth. 

Mrs. David Jamal, the sensible Christian wife of our dragoman and guide, 
was educated in a Beirut school for girls, and went to Jerusalem as a native helper 
in a school there. Since her marriage, as before, the condition of her fellow- 
countrywomen has been a sore weight upon her mind, and, although the mother 
of a large family, and a diligent housewife, she, some years ago, collected in her 
own home a class of native girls and began to give them instruction in plain 
sewing, knitting, crocheting, embroidery, and in all departments of housework. 
Twice a week she has presided over what, in her humility, she never thought of 
calling ' ' an industrial school, ' ' the attendance varying from thirteen to eighteen. 
She can accommodate no more than eighteen, and has always applications on hand 
from ten or twelve who wish to join the class, and cannot for want of room. 

Mrs. Jamal gives her time and house, and, up to this time, the expenses of 
materials for the work and the luncheon cooked twice a week by the girls under 
her supervision have been met by the sale of articles manufactured by the class, 
and an allowance of twenty dollars a month made by a benevolent man, a 
sojourner for some years in Jerusalem. He has now left Syria, and other circum- 
stances make it impracticable for him to continue the appropriation to this branch 
of mission work. Unless help comes from other sources, this most sensible and 
practical enterprise of a Syrian woman for the benefit of her sex will have to be 
abandoned. 

I wish it were possible for some of the societies represented by my readers to 
take up the cause of this industrial class. Twelve "circles" contributing each 



the flag of the orient. 



85 



twenty dollars a year would enable Mrs. Jamal to carry it on and to receive a 
large number of pupils. I may add that, steadily and tactfully, she infuses 
religious teaching with instruction in handiwork and housewifery. 

Upon a grander scale, and aiming steadily to accomplish the same end— the 
elevation of Syrian women from fellowship with t u ~ beasts that perish to the plane 
of rational, immortal beings— are such schools as Miss Everett's in Beirut; that 
at Sidon, in which Mrs. Dale, the daughter of Dr. Bliss, of the Syrian Protestant 




"WOMEN WHO ARE NEVER MANURE IN INTEl^ECT." 



College, is an efficient laborer; and others at Nazareth, Haifa and Bethlehem 
under the care of English societies. 

One and all find a serious impediment to their work in the infamous system 
that gives children of ten, eleven and twelve years of age to men whose concep- 
tions of the nuptial relation are of the lowest order. Still, there are parents who;, 
through ambition or natural affection, desire that their girls should be educated like 
European and American women, and allow them to remain under the care of Chris- 
tian instructors up to sixteen or seventeen before transferring them to their father's 
or husband's houses. For every such exception, we thank God and take courage* 



B6 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



My pen was in place to affix the signature to the above when the sound of 
chanting in the street drew me to the balcony. Down the middle of the muddy 
thoroughfare walked a short procession of men in striped 1 ' abiehs ' ' (native 
cloaks made of coarse camel's .hair) , chanting intermittently and listlessly, fol- 
lowed by a troop of ragged boys. The foremost man bore in his arms the 
uncoffined body of a baby. It was wrapped in a white cotton shroud; the waxen 
face and closed eyes were pretty and peaceful. The sight of a dead infant always 
wrings my heart to breaking, and the old, sadly -familiar ache forced from me an 
ejaculation of pain. " 01 , the dear little baby ! and the poor, poor mother !" 

"It is a girl!" said a voice in my ear. "Thank God it is dead!" An 
American wcman, whose nature is all sweetness, and her guest, an English 
teacher in the Bethlehem school, were in the adjoining balcony. 

" It is taken from the evil to come," pursued the speaker, answering my look 
of inquiry. " If you knew, as we do, the almost certain doom from which that 
little creature has been saved by death, you would say, ' Amen !' " 



CHAPTER VIII. 



FUDDA'S BETROTHAL. 

IT is something to get fast hold of a woman in this country who does not 
take fright at the sight of note-book and fountain-pen. It is something 
more to secure one who knows of herself just what I wish to find out 
and to report. Best of all it is to discover that my brave woman, my 
well-informed woman and the woman who can speak Arabic fluently and English 
graphically, are one and the same, and cheerfully at my service. 

I have seated her in my room and given her due notice that I mean to make 
use of her to the utmost. Circumstances — not the least formidable of which is the 
accident of my foreign birth and breeding — have kept me, to some extent, in the 
outer court when certain ceremonials are performed in the innermost of the home. 
I may see marriage processions, but as a visitor, not a participant in the festivities 
and solemnities of the occasion, and when I have sought to " interview" prospec- 
tive brides and brides' parents, I have been conscious that a meagre outline of 
history is all that I can obtain. 

But here is one who was born and brought up in Syria, who has used her 
eyes, ears, tongue and brain, who has a fine sense of humor and the reportorial 
faculty of seeing everything, and telling what she has seen. By virtue of some 
or all of these advantages, she has assisted at a dozen or more Moslem weddings, 
and has one fresh in her mind. I shall let her tell the story as nearly as possible 
in her own way. The occasional lapse into native idioms adds flavor to the narra- 
tive. I only regret my inability to enliven it for my readers as she brightens it for me 
by gesture and facial play. The nervous action of her strong, supple hands, the 
flash of eyes and teeth, as she touches the comic features of the story, would make 
tame language piquante. 

She begins apologetically: 

" You will not mind that I say how strange " (rolling the r's richly) " some 
'of the European customs of 3-oung men and young women appear to us. I 
have seen young people who are betrothed walk in the streets, arm-in-arm, and 
when they do separate, say, for the gentleman to go into camping in the interior, 
and the lad} 7 to remain here with her mother or friends, he will take her in his 
arms and keess her in sight of others ! And these are not common or vulgar or 
not-educated people. Oh, no ! but ladies and gentlemen of the best order in their 
own land — genteel and religious. The ways of these strangers are wonderful, 

(87) 



88 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 




NT 



mm 



and may belong to the customs and climate of their countries, but they would not 
be suffered here — not for one hour. With us, if a girl smile so much as once at 
the man she is to marry, he will not have her — he will cast her off. He will say 
— and he is wise — ' If she be light in her behavior to me, she will be light to any 
other man. She is not to be trusted.' " 

' ' Yet they must become acquainted with one another, before they are married, 
and it is natural for a light-hearted girl to smile while talking to a lover. ' ' 

1 ' She never talks to him ! ' ' hands and eyes combining to enforce the declara- 
tion. " Usually, she has never seen him unless she catch a glimpse of him 

through the window, when 
there is not danger that he 
will see her peep at him, 
and despise her for being 
bold and curious. 

' ' You see it is this 
way: A man who has 
work, or money from his 
father or in some way, 
says to an old woman — 
perhaps it is his aunt, per- 
haps it is his cousin, or 
perhaps it is an acquain- 
tance, — ' It is time I get 
married. Do 3^ou know 
any girl that would suit 
me?' 

' 1 She is always on 
the outlook, you see, for 
it is many presents some 
get in this way, and she 
has ready an answer: 

" ' Oh, yes ! there is 
(we will say) 1 Fudda, 

"A CHII.D, AND NOTHING MORE." wW father liyeS nea r 

by me. She is a pretty girl, and young and healthy, and of a good family.' 

' ' Then she tell him who is her father and her mother, and how respectable 
they are, and how young and good-looking is the girl. Perhaps she is but ten 
years old, or she may be fourteen." 

' ' I know, ' ' I interrupt, ' ' your girls mature much earlier than ours. A girl of 
twelve with us is a child, and as for one of ten, she is hardly more than a baby." 



',1 s * 



THE FlyAG OF THE ORIENT. 



89 



My companion is grave enough now; her eyes are dark and moist; she sinks 
her voice almost to a whisper. 

" A girl of ten is a child with us. A child and nothing more. 

1 1 Yet I know one who is married to a man seventy years old ! Her father 
could not give her bread, he was so poor, and this old man gave a good price for 
her — fifty napoleons, for she is a pretty child. " 

' ' A good price ! Do fathers sell their children ?' ' 

' ' You shall hear. We do not call it that, but when you have listened, you 
may say it is what you please. Well ! the young man is willing, after what he is 
told, to marry the girl, and the old woman goes off to see Fudda's mother, just as 
if she had nothing of importance to say, but was passing by and thought she 
would make a visit, and presently, when the}' have had coffee together and smoked 
a few cigarettes, she says, if Fudda is in the room, ' Will you send your daughter 
out ? I wish to speak with you.' Then she will bring forward the name of the 
young man, and make many praises of him, and tell how he would wish to many 
her daughter. The mother knows, and the old woman who goes between knows, 
that all depends upon what the father shall say, but they like to talk it over for a 
long time, maybe two hours, and back the old woman returns to the young man, 
and says, ' I have made straight the path for you so far as I can. Now it is for 
you to act. ' ' ' 

" I see !" (and I think that I do.) " He must speak to the father and ask 
permission to address the daughter. That is the custom in some European 
countries, as well." 

It is plain that I am not upon the right line. Her gesture is deprecatory. 

"That would not be correct. It would be too much haste — and not at all 
respectful. The young man goes to his uncle or his brother — if he be an older 
brother and very sober and — and — deegnified, and says — 1 1 want that girl. Will 
you talk to her father and see what arrangements you can make ?' So the friends 
—for it is quite usual that he sends two — go to the father and tell what a respect- 
able young man this is, and how respectable and of good family are his parents, 
and that he weesh to marry his daughter. Perhaps, it may be, that the father is 
not willing, for some reason, to let the marriage take place. Then he laughs and 
puts to scorn all that has been done. He say — 1 This is some silly gossip of the 
women. I will give my wife a sound scold for her foolishness. You may go tell 
your nephew — or your brother, as it may be — that I have no daughter to be mar* 
ried.' And there is the end of it all." 

" But if the father has no objection ?" 

" Ah ! then it goes on. The father says, * How much will your friend give 
for this, my daughter V Then they bargain and bargain. If she be pretty — very 
pretty — the father may ask as much as a hundred and fifty napoleons. But it iff 



Fudd'a at The; wew* 



THE Fly AG OF THE ORIENT. 



likely that tie will not get more than eighty, or maybe seventy-five. If she be 
not handsome, maybe he will get but forty. This, when the father is not rich, or 
When he is greedy and wants the money for himself. You see it is this way: He 
say, ' I have brought up my girl and had the expense and trouble of her all these 
years, and she has not earned for me one piastre. Her husband must pay me 
something for all that.' But the better class of Moslems, and especially of our 
own people — the Christians "--(this includes Roman Catholics, Greeks, and 
Protestants), " will prefer to have the price paid in jewelry and clothes that will 
belong to the bride. Then her father will have to give her nothing from his own 
house. So— the bargain is made, and the bridegroom and his friends, and the 
uncle or brother of the bride — and if she have no uncle or brother, perhaps her 
father, will go to a judge — an advocate — do you call him?" 
" A lawyer — do you mean?" 

1 ' That is what I would say. They go to a lawyer, and he writes down on a. 
paper how that this man — mentioning his name — desires to have in marriage 
Fudda, the daughter of such and such a man, and promises to give on such a day, 
first a ring (the first present must always be a ring) , and on another day a silk 
dress, and again a gold chain, maybe, or a bracelet, and next another dress, 
and to this he signs his name, and the witnesses write theirs, and the lawyer 
signs with the seal, and the paper goes to Fudda' s father. This is the * cere- 
mo-nee. ' " 

' 1 1 beg your pardon ! What did you say ?' ' 

" The ' cere- mo- rc^.' This is what makes her betrothed to this man. There 
is no other. No church service. No questions, no answers. No promises. No 
vows. As soon as what the bridegroom has promised is paid, he can claim his 
wife. He can go to her father and say, ' I have here your receipts for so muck 
money — or so many dresses and jewelry. Now I will have my wife.' She i» 
his by the law, and if her father did not give her up, the law would take her 
away from him. 

" Once in a great, great while, it happens that the man has promised what he 
cannot pay, or he is careless, or he is not honest, or he does not care so much for 
the girl as he did at first. Something like this makes him slow in keeping his 
engagement. One, two, three, maybe four years are gone, and he has not paid 
all, and Fudda is living in her father's house, his wife and yet not his wife. 
By-and-by, the father loses his patience, and he sends word to the man — ' This 
must come to an end. My daughter cannot be married to any other man while 
she is betrothed to you, and you cannot have her until you have filled your part 
of the contract. If you can pay what you have promised, do it at once. If you 
cannot, or do not mean to do it— if you are so disho-no-ra-ble as to wish to put 
this deesgrace upon me and my daughter — then divorce her, so that I can give 



9 2 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



her to some better man.* If he cannot or will not keep his engagement, he must 
divorce her, just as if she were his wife." 

4 * Suppose the poor girl has become attached to him in this time ?' ' 

" She could not !" This is said so positively that I am somewhat abashed at 
having offered the suggestion. " She has never seen him, unless she may have 
met him, by chance, in the street. Then it is her duty as a modest woman to 
turn her head aside" — suiting the action to the sentence — " and hurry by. Of 
course, he has not once seen her face, for she never stirs out of doors without her 
veil, and should he come to her father's door on an errand, she must hide in a 
cupboard, or run behind a curtain, or con-ceal herself. 

" Suppose, though, the young man has kept his word, and all the price is 
paid, and the lawyer writes his receipt that so many jewelry and dresses and so 
much money has passed through his hands to Fudda's father. Sometimes this is 
done in a few weeks, sometimes in a few days. If the time is short, the girl does 
not know that she is to be married, or that any man has asked for her, until, 
maybe, two or three days before the wedding. Then, her father will say to her — 
'On such a day — maybe next Wednesday or Monday — you are to be given in 
marriage to such a man.' " 

" Whom she has never seen !" I shudder forth. 

" It may be that she has never heard his name until that minute." 

' ' What if she refuses to marry him ?' ' 

" Ah, then, would not her father give her a good slapping? He would ask 
her, * Who knows best what is good for you — you, a silly, ignorant child, or your 
father and your mother ? You disobedient, ungrateful girl ! And if you would 
not have your father's curse, and be turned in deesgrace from your father's house, 
do as you are bid. ' 

' 'And, indeed, madame," interjects my informant, judicially, ' ' he is in the right 
of it. What can a girl who has been kept close in-doors when there is any danger 
of meeting a man, and seen nothing of the world, understand of such things ? 

" Are such marriages generally happy?" 

It is not a query to be dismissed lightly, and she ponders a minute. 

" Say there are one hundred marriages made in this way. I should say that 
ten out of the hundred are not happy. And ' ' — slowly, and again dropping her 
voice — " I have, myself, known of two girls who threw themselves into a well to 
escape marrying men chosen by their parents." 

David Jamal has allowed me to read an interesting paper prepared by 
himself, upon " Marriage Customs in Jerusalem and the adjacent villages." It 
contains, among other valuable and curious things, a literal translation of an 
Arabic song sung by the "future bridegroom and his friends and relations" at 
the betrothal-feast in the house of the bride's father. 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



93 



At my request, Alcides has written a metrical version, that yet faithfully 
renders the spirit and almost the language of the original: 

O father of the bride ! throw wide each door 

To welcome us, the long-robed bridal train. 
May Allah, in his mercy, evermore 

Protect thy home from every grief and pain. 
Thy daughter's fame has spread to distant lands, 

Men call her gracious, fair and swift of thought, 
Her father, prince of gallant desert-bands, 

Whose wealth Aleppo's castle might have bought. 

O father of the bride ! be generous, 

Ask not a heavy dowry for the bride ; 
Thy gold will perish if 'tis gathered thus 

But we, thy friends, remain forever tried. 
Then welcome us, thy friends, the wedding guests, 

Prepare a feast for us beneath thy dome ; 
And then, when thou hast granted our behests, 

Mount thy swift steed — escort us from thy home. 



CHAPTER IX. 

FUDDA'S WEDDING. 

ND I must tell you, at the first, madame, that her father is 
a rich man and much respected, and the man she was to 
marry is also rich. You must know that the better the 
class of people, the more strictly they follow all the rules 
I have spoken of, regarding betrothing and marrying. 
So I was very anxious to go to Fudda's wedding, for I 
had heard much of the beautiful presents she had received 
from her bridegroom, and the great company that was to 
be, and the feasting, and all that. 

" When the mother of the bridegroom heard what I 
wished, she was very kind. She said to me, ' You shall 
come with me, and see all at my side.' 

" She was as good as her word. When the night of the wedding came I was 
beside her in the procession that left the house of the bridegroom's father. Such 
a procession! The women in white 'izzars,' and veiled, some with crowns of 
flowers on their heads, and the men in their best clothes; the friends of the bride- 
groom and the near relations of the bride in wedding- garments that were presents 
from him. But oh ! it is an expensive matter to be married here ! 

" I have heard sometimes, when the uncles and cousins or brothers of the 
bride are not well-satisfied with such gifts as he has sent to them, they will stop his 
way to the bride' s house, and cry, 1 You shall not have her until you give me a 
coat, ' or maybe trousers, or something else. 

' 1 No such thing happened the night I am telling }^ou of. We marched — the 
women all together, and the men together, and many carrying torches, and a band 
of music playing merry tunes at the head of the procession, until we came to the 
house of the bride's father. There the men stopped, at the gate and in the court- 
yard, and we women went on up to the chambers. One of them was locked, and 
inside of it was the bride, and no one had a right to open that door until such 
time as the bridegroom's mother should come. Everybody made way for her, and 
you may be sure that I kept close beside her. She unlocked the door and threw 
it open, and oh, dear ! what a rush there was ! 

" The first thing I saw was Fudda, seated up high in a chair, and the chair 
set upon a sofa at the back of the room. She was covered all over with a white 

(94) 




THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



95 



izzar, like mine," — pointing to the sheet-like drapery she had laid aside at my 
invitation — " and a mendeel like this, over her face," — holding up the square of 
flowered tissue edged with hand-made silk lace, always worn by Syrian women in 
the street — ' * and over all was a long veil of pink muslin, reaching down to her 
feet. There she sat, straight and never moving, her hands in her lap, and her 
eyes closed under the two veils. You know that the bride must go to her husband 
in pink ?' ' 

" I thought white the bridal garment all over the world." 

' ' Not with us. Pink she must wear, or the marriage will not be fortunate. 
On the floor, directly in front of Fudda, was a stand, and upon the stand a great 
brass tray, as big as this," — extending her arms to indicate a wide circle — " with 
ever and ever so many candles lighted upon it. I thought there must be one 
hundred. All the married women rushed for a candle, and there was screaming 
and laughing and scrambling such as I had never heard before. I was afraid I 
should be knocked down and trampled upon. 

' * And what do you think it was for ? Every married woman who got a 
candle would see her own children married in her lifetime and in her husband's 
lifetime as well. Of course, that is all superstition, but the Mohammedans are 
very, very superstitious." 

" What was the bride doing all this time?" 

Teeth and eyes make arch play over the comely face. " Sitting still and her 
eyes shut ! It is not good fortune to open them. Presently, when the candles 
were all taken, in came her father and her brother, and helped her down, and put on 
her two swords, one belt crossing her breast — over the veil so, the other so !" 
designating the right and left sides. ' ' Next, they led her down stairs and out of 
doors, she sobbing behind her veils. You could see her tremble and shake all over 
with grief at leaving her home forever. At the door, up stepped four men carrying 
— -what do you name a cover fastened up high on four sticks ?' ' 

" A canopy." 

" That is it ! And under this canopy she walked in the procession to the 
house of the bridegroom's father. She walked, oh, so slow, about one inch to each 
step — so ! ' ' 

She rises and folding her hands and closing her eyes, marches, stiffly and 
laboriously, deliberately across the floor. We both laugh heartily, as she resumes 
her natural gait and manner. 

" She must have looked like a jointed doll," I say. 

"That was what she did look like- and the joints were not easy. I thought 
we would never, never get to the end 01 our walk, and the band played all the 
time. At last, we were there, and agaii. the men were to wait outside, while the 
women went in. The bride was taken with us. She did not seem to go in 



96 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



of herself. They sat her down flat upon a rug on the floor, and took off the 
swords, and the pink veil, and the short veil, and the white ' izzar, ' and we could 
see that she had on only her little girl's dress of clean print, made like a child's. She 
did not look to be more than eleven at most, and like a baby that is scared, her 
eyes shut, and her face wet with tears, and biting her lips to keep from crying 
out aloud. She kept very still, however, while they stripped off her print gown 
and stockings (her sandals were left 
at the door with all the rest) , and 
put on her finery. Silk stockings 
and silk trousers and a fine — very 
fine — pink silk frock. And the 
women crowded and talked, and 
were busy all around her. One 
would put on her stockings, and 
one braid her hair into two long 
braids that hung down behind, 
and were tied with pink ribbons. 
Another put her dress over her 
head, and one fastened it, and one 
stuck flowers in her hair, and this 
one pulled a pair of long gloves on 
her hands. All would take a share 
in decking her out in her jewelry. 
I never saw so many bracelets and 
chains and brooches upon one per- 
son before — diamonds and rubies 
and emeralds and turquoises. When 
her gloves were on, the rings were 
slipped upon her fingers over them. 
I could not help laughing to myself 
to see her — always keeping her eyes 
shut — stick out her fingers, so, to 
have the rings put on, just like 
your doll with joints. When she 
was all dressed, the women pulled 
her upon her feet, and a pink veil 

was fastened to her head and came to the floor in front. Then they brought again 
the two swords. Now they were crossed — in this way " — making a St. Andrew's 
cross with her forefinger — "and tied with ribbons. Two women held them over 
her head, an old woman who is a sort of doctor and wise woman, you know, and 




IT WAS PLAIN 



TO BE SEEN THAT HE WAS 
PLEASED." 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



97 



another as old and much looked up to. These swords signified her father and her 
brother. You see, should her husband not be kind to her, he must recollect that 
she had somebodies to protect her. 

' ' Now the door was opened and the bridegroom was waiting on the outside, 
and he came up to her where she stood between the two women, with the swords 
crossed over her head, and the pink veil down to her feet, and the jewelry shining 
through it, and on her arms and hands. Then he lifted the veil and saw her face- 
to-face for the first time in all their lives. It was plain to be seen that he was 
pleased, and he took her by the hand and led her to his own room. 

' ' It is not what you call the etiquette for him to stay there more than a few 
minutes. He came out soon and took his part in the feasting and dancing and 
making merry that lasted all night long. The next da)' there was more feasting 
in the house of the bridegroom's father, and the third day yet more, all at the 
expense of the bridegroom. I have known weddings that cost so dear that the 
bridegroom had to sell some of the jewelry that he had given his wife to pay his 
debts. The bride is not seen at any of the feasts. From the minute she is a wife, 
she must not speak to another man except her father and brothers. Not so much 
as her husband's brother, unless he permits it. And he does not often allow his 
brother to see her, for fear she should like him better than she likes her husband. 
He would divorce her in one minute if he found her talking to any man, even 
through a window very high from the ground. ' ' 

* * Could he divorce her legally upon such a pretext ! ' ' 

" He can divorce her for anything he likes. If she has not his supper ready 
in time; if she is not respectful to him; if she does not come quick, on the minute, 
when he calls her; if he would like to marry a younger woman, he can say the 
three sentences that mean, 1 Go ! I am divorced from you !' and she is no more 
his wife. 

" When he speaks these three sentences, she will drop whatever she is doing — 
sewing, washing, cooking, nursing her baby — and draw her ' izzar ' over her face, 
and go straight out of his house. She must not look at or speak to him any more 
than to a strange man. Perhaps he has been angry and said more than he meant, 
and is sorry in a minute, and tries to speak to her, or would follow her. ' No ! 
she says, keeping her face hidden and putting out her hand to warn him back — 
in this way." — a dramatic gesture — "'You are not my husband. I do not 
know you ! ' " 

' 1 Where can the poor creature go ?' ' 

"To her father, if she has one. If he is dead, to her brother, or if she has 
no brother, to her uncle. He says to the man who was her husband: 1 Give my 
daughter, or my sister, or my niece, the clothes and the jewelry that belong to 
her. My house is her home until she can get another husband.' " 
7 



9 8 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



" And her children ? What becomes of them ?' ' 

1 ' If she has a nursing-baby it goes with her, and the father must support it 
until it can do without her. Then it belongs to him, like the other children." 
" Cannot the mother visit them, or have them with her at times ?' ' 
' 'No. They are not hers any longer. They must go with the father." 
" Does he often marry again ?" 

" Always ! always ! A man must marry, you know." 

" I hope the new wife is kind to the children," I say, sighingly. 

Then the narrator smiles roguishly, the look that makes her face attractive. 
Such a look, I may remark, as I have never yet seen upon the visage of a Moslem 
woman. These carry in every lineament the stamp of inferiority to the other sex: 
are mere mindless machines to minister to the pleasure and comfort of their 
masters. 

" It happens, once in a while, that she is so cross to them, and keeps her 
husband's house so badly, that he sees plainly what a great mistake he made in 
divorcing their mother. Ah ! but what would he not give if he had never said 
those three sentences ? So he says to himself, ' I have made a poor bargain this 
time. I will have my first wife back again.' Now, what does he do but send 
word that she must be married to another man, and then be divorced, and marry 
her first husband again ! 

" Yes, it is true that I tell you. He cannot take back the woman he divorced, 
you see, but he can marry the woman another man has put away. Of course, it 
would not be a sensible man who would marry somebody he knew would be taken 
from him next day. So the woman's friends look about for a man who was born 
silly — what do you name him ? ' ' 

" You cannot mean an idiot !" 

" Yes ! yes ! that is it — or a crazy man. They pay him to take this woman 
as his wife, and to morrow to divorce her, that her first husband may have his 
wish. It seems horrible to you, and we native Christians cry out upon it as a sin 
and a shame, but is thought nothing of by Mohammedans. It is quite usual for 
a man to marry one, two, three, four wives, and divorce them all. I know a man 
who had six, one after the other. He divorced four, one died, and the last one is 
now his widow." 

"And the divorced wives were not disgraced in the eyes of acquaintances?" 
" But, surely not ! If they are young and pretty, or very good housekeeper 
©r if they have some money, it is as easy for them as for girls to marry." 



BETHLEHEM BRIDE. 



CHAPTER X. 



AMONG THE LEPERS. 




T is, I think, incorrigible Mark Twain, who says that the name 
of the 1 ' street that is called Straight ' ' is the only bit of 
irony in the Scriptures. The flippant fling comes into the 
mind of man}^ pilgrims to the " Eye of the East." It arises 
to our lips as we follow it to the Eastern gate of the 
city, and see it merged into a wider and less devious 
road. 

This is bounded on one side by the dry moat of the 
wall. We ought, after two months' seasoning in regions 
associated in the western imaginations with attar of rose 
and spicy breezes, and Araby the blest — to be coolly indif- 
a leper in the sun. f e rent to the effluvia arising from the wasting carcasses 
of two camels which have been thrown out of the highway into the ditch. A 
pack of lean scavenger-curs, yellow and black, are snarling over the unsavory 
spoils. Skeletons, denuded and dessicated, lie further on, and small bones make 
an unattractive miscellany between the larger and more pronounced. 

"It is an Eastern poet, I believe, who says that Damascus is as fragrant 
as Paradise ?' ' observes Alcides, with his nose well in the air. 

There is no reply to the gibe, for our guide, Abraham Ayoub, a Damascene, 
selected by David Jamal, " halts" us at a miserable gateway in a more miserable 
mud wall on the left of the road. If there were ever gates, they have fallen from 
the hinges long ago. This is the entrance to a filthy court-yard where the sun 
falls with kindly warmth. Four human figures are huddled in the sunniest cor- 
ner, mere bundles of rags to the casual glance. Two look up as we pass, and our 
shadows fall upon them. With our minds full of Bible stories of " lepers white 
as snow," we should not recognize these caricatures of humanity as victims of the 
awful plague, had not David's graphic descriptions prepared us for the revelation. 

Alcides has recorded in his note-book as our dragoman's diagnosis of the 
loathsome thing — " a combination of itch, chilblains and gangrene." No more 
apt language comes to my pen, after having seen scores of the wretched objects. 
Beyond the outer court, we pass between two huts into a second enclosure, about 
thirty feet square, surrounded by squalid hovels, all facing upon the open area. 

(100) 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



IOI 



They are of mud, they are without windows; they have one door apiece, and they 
are unfurnished, save for the ragged mats which serve as beds. Scraps of moldy 
bread, bits of bone and rotten vegetables strew the floor — the remnants of meals 
devoured here as the dogs without the walls are gnawing theirs. Of the odors 
flowing through the doors into the sun-filled outer world, I cannot speak. On 
this fine day everybody is outside except a few women dimly visible in the 
obscure interiors, and at these we abstain from looking as we pass. 

A strange voice, both hoarse and shrill, hails us while we stand in the middle 
of the courtyard. It proceeds from the porch of a small frame house directly 
opposite the opening 
by which we had en- 
tered. The house is, 
we note, larger than 
the mud huts, and has 
two windows besides 
the door. A woman, 
or girl, for she must 
be under twenty, and 
might be good-looking 
but for her viragoish 
expression and a cer- 
tain hardness, — I 
might term it a callos- 
ity of skin and features 
that betrays the blight 
which has fallen upon 
her — stands upon the 
upper step wringing 
out a cloth she has 
taken from a great 
metal pan. We have house oe chikf leper in naaman's house of lepers. 
interrupted her day's washing, and for other reasons she is ill-pleased. Her husky 
scream is a question, for our guide answers apologetically what he translates to us 
in a hasty undertone: 

"This gentleman"— designating Alcides— " is a great 'hakim' (physi- 
cian) from over the sea, who seeks to help you if he can. We intend no 
harm." 

She has thrown the cloth back into the tub with a despairing gesture, and 
rushed into the house while he is still speaking, appearing a minute later at the 
window. 




102 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



" Go away ! " she cries, her voice breaking oddly upon the high notes as a 
consumptive's fails when he is about to cough. " Go away ! Allah only can help 
us, and he will not ! ' ' 

' ' Her father is the chief man of the lepers, " says the guide to us. " He was 
once a rich — one very rich — man. Now he is here — and old — and cannot leave 
his bed. His housekeeper, also old, and this, his only child, live here with him 
in the Naaman House." 

For this loathly place (to borrow a word from a former generation), is nigh 
unto the grounds where are shown a few columns surrounded by a mud-and-stone 
wall, said to be the ruins of the house of the famous Syrian captain. The asylum 
is maintained by Moslem charity. Wealth}' Mohammedans die and leave legacies 
for the support of the colon)', in the hope that the act may bring repose to their 
own disembodied souls. Kind-hearted people in the neighborhood give them 
provisions, leaving them inside the outer gate and hastening away to avoid con- 
tamination. In spring-time a few of the stronger men are hired to do light work 
in the fields, and in harvest to glean after the reapers, gather beans, etc. A less 
humane measure is the permission granted to the least afflicted of the colon)- to 
bake in the public ovens dough kneaded by their diseased hands. 

We had been led to believe the Naaman House a hospital for what are 
surely the most grievously-smitten of all God's human creatures, and are surprised 
to learn that this retreat is merely a hole in which they can burrow and hide and 
be fed apart from the rest of the world. Last year there were forty-two lepers 
here; now, we are told, they number but twenty-eight. 

" What has become of the rest ?" 

The guide lifts his shoulders to his ears. ' ' What must come to all of them 
— death. Each is a dying man even now. See!" 

Pity unutterable gets the better of disgust, as we survey the scene. The 
lepers lie grouped and sit singly in the sunshine, most of them against the wall, 
seemingly regardless of our presence. Curiosity is dead within them. They do not 
even beg for "bakshish," as is the habit of their kind in the streets of the city and 
on the wayside. Some crouch in corners, their poor, marred faces supported by hands 
from which the fingers are literally dropping; others lie flat upon their backs, soak- 
ing in the warmth, eyes closed and jaws falling as if dead. Every few minutes one 
begins to cough spasmodically, and the example proving infectious, another and 
another will join in, until a horrid chorus that threatens to shake the loose frames 
apart fills the place. Two near us crawl away, still coughing in a weak, wheezy way, 
clots of blood dripping from their lips as they go. None of them walk, but all 
shuffle along on their haunches like beasts who have been hamstrung, or creep upon 
hands and knees. In some cases, the hands and feet are muffled in dirty rags. 
Turks are here in garments that bear tokens of old-time finery in shreds of 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



tarnished gold lace and frayed embroidery, and Bedouins that are ghastly travesties 
of the tall, bronzed horsemen we see in the desert and among the mountains. 
They still wear the costume of their race, the suggestion thus conveyed of the 
free, active life forever left behind them accentuating their present misery. 

One of these loiters nearer to us than the rest, his eyes and manner expres- 
sive of some degree of interest in us and our movements. The girl at the window 
swears furiously at him, as he obeys the beckon of our guide's hand and approaches. 




RUINS OF NAAMAN'S HOUSE. 



' ' Dare not to go near them ! ' ' she vociferates. ' ' They are dogs and the off- 
Spring of dogs, as their fathers were before them. They come, not to give alms, 
but to make a mock of us and to take pictures of us !" 

The last half-sentence is drawn forth by the sight of the kodak swung from 
Alcides' shoulder. 

A magic word of two syllables — the first I verily believe that Arab and 
Syrian babies learn to lisp— has quickened the Bedouin's step, and he stands 
before us, well-made and heavily bearded, with comparatively few traces in face 
and figure of the fatal malady. He is about forty years old, and when he speaks 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



his voice is faint and dissonant. His lungs must be well-nigh gone. He is quite 
willing to converse — thanks to the prospective " bakshish." 

' ' How long have you been ill ?" we asked by the mouth of the interpreter. 

"Since I was fourteen years old." 

"At what age do the symptoms first show themselves ?" 
" In men, about fifteen; in women, twelve to thirteen." 

"Are you contented — and — " bringing out the last word with an effort — 
" comfortable here ?' ' 

" I am not unhappy. I have no work to do. I have my lodgings. I have 
my food. What more do I want?" 

" But if you have no work to do, how do you pass the day ?" 

' ' I sit in the sun. I do nothing. Why should I work ? Man works to get 
clothes; I have clothes. And for bread and bed, and a cover by night when it 
rains. These are mine." 

' 1 Have you amusements here ?" trying not to glance around the mean enclosure 
and at the repulsive occupants. 

He stares vacantly. The idea is too new and strange to work itself into his 
brain. From the groups distributed about the court odd murmurs are arising; 
mutterings in weak, raucous tones, like the growling and whining of beasts dis- 
turbed in their slumbers in the sunshine. The woman leans over the window-sill 
and devotes us to the vengeance of heaven and the abode of the fiend. The 
whole affair is an abhorrent nightmare, from which we are thankful to escape. Our 
Bedouin casts furtive looks over his shoulder at the malcontents, and will answer 
no more questions, however mildly put. The liberal bakshish dropped from a 
prudent height into his maimed hand does not pacify the daughter of the bed- 
ridden chief of the queer colony. As long as we can hear her, she is reckoning 
up the misdeeds of our ancestry and imprecating curses upon our heads. 

Dante never pictured a fouler deep than this so-called House of Mercy, where 
beings of like form and nature with ourselves are decaying piecemeal, while the 
breath of life still animates their dismembered bodies. As I have intimated, this 
form of leprosy must not be confounded with that which overtook Moses as a 
proof of God's ability to work whatever wonder He wills; or Miriam and Gehazi 
andUzziah, as punishment for sin, or that which drove haughty Naaman to bathe 
in little Jordan, at the behest of a prophet who would not even grant him a per- 
sonal interview. This is hereditary in forty-nine cases out of fifty, and the recog- 
nized result of the sins of the forefathers. David Jamal and his Damascus friend 
agree that the malady is unknown at this day among the Jews, testimony which 
is corroborated by other authorities to which I have referred the question. 

" It is clearly, then, not caused by want of neatness in this generation," is 
the grave conclusion of our dragoman. 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



Intermarriage among lepers are constantly occurring, and sometimes, 
although, David says, not frequently, children are born to the horrible heritage of 
disease and disgrace. 

Instances are on record of attempts to avert the certain doom by removing the 
child in early infancy to the judicious guardianship of others than the parents. 




"they obtrude; themselves upon our notice." 



In spite of sanitary and medical precautions, the unmistakable signs make their 
appearance between the ages of thirteen and fifteen. The incipient stages are 
intense itching of the hands, extending gradually to other parts until the whole 
frame is a body of living death, a mass of putrefying sores and decomposing bones. 

The Jerusalem lepers who are at large are, if possible, in a sadder case than 
those sheltered in the Naaman House at Damascus. They have, it is true, a 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



village of their own below Siloam (whose ' ' shady rill ' ' and growing lily are 
sadly dismissed to the realm of hymnal romance), a wretched cluster of huts 
to which they resort at nightfall, but the streets are their home, and begging is 
the only means by which they earn a livelihood. The) 7 haunt places irequented 
by tourists and pilgrims, following Russian and Greek devotees in their periodical 
visits to the Virgin's Tomb, Gethsemane and the Mount of Olives. There may 
be in the Holy City about sixty of this class of professional mendicants. 

Singularly enough, lepers are found in but four towns in Syria: Damascus, 
Nablous, Ramleh and Jerusalem. These are to them as cities of refuge when 
■attacked in the neighboring villages. No longer with the warning cry of 
"unclean! unclean!" they obtrude themselves upon our notice whenever we 
walk or drive through the thoroughfares in Damascus and Jerusalem; stumps 
of hands or fingers, from which one or several joints are missing, are thrust into 
-our faces, the horrid voice, unhuman in quality and inflection, calls for "bak- 
shish," and the disfigured faces grin or weep, as suits the owner's mood and taste. 

The lights in this dark picture are found in the Leper Home at Jerusalem, 
founded in 1867 by the Baroness Keffenbrinck-Ascheradin, and by her trans- 
ferred in 1880 to the Moravians. The building stands upon a hill pleasantly 
visible from the Bethany road. The management is excellent, and all the 
•appointments are those of a well-kept hospital. Divine service is held twice a 
week, and those who are too ill to attend it are visited separately in their rooms. 
The 4 ' house father ' ' and his wife and the chaplain address themselves to their 
terrible task in the spirit expressed by the last-named in a recent report: 

' ' Remembering always that the loathsome and terrible disease of the patient 
is one which seems ever to have thrilled our Saviour's breast with a keen and 
instantaneous compassion. 

' ' Gospel addresses, prayers offered at the bedside of many a stricken sufferer 
and private intercourse with Moslem and Christian patients have led many to 
•acknowledge the benefits of Christianity and to endeavor to live according to the 
high principles of the Gospel. ' ' 

Physicians and nurses acknowledge that the malady is absolutely incurable. 
They are likewise unanimous in the opinion that, however long the seeds may lie 
latent in the individual or family, leprosy is not to be eliminated from the blood. All 
that they can do — and this is much — is, by cleanliness, alleviative medicines and ex- 
ternal applications, to lessen present suffering, and smooth the pathway to the grave. 

Wild rumors of extraordinary cures effected by a German physician who was 
here for a while, and whose work included some skilful operations, and of the mirac- 
ulous properties of a certain oil, have excited false hopes in man}- who eagerly 
apply for admission. Those in charge of the Home are firmty candid in dissipating 
these fancies, declaring that no mortal skill can do anything more than to alleviate 
suffering and to delay the horrible end. 



CHAPTER XI. 

"THE PEARL OF THE EAST/* 




UTSIDH the walls of Damascus — which, if you like, you may consider 
the setting of the " Pearl " — we first encounter a couple whom we are 
to know so much better by-and-by that I may be excused for intro- 
ducing them somewhat at length. 



IyUther Zwinglius Sharpe, D. D., is the ex-pastor of an Eastern church in 
America, and ex-president of a Western college, and these are but a few of his 
titles to the respectful notice of the world in general and his country people in par- 
ticular. A Congregationalist by birth, education and choice, he yet committed 
the ecclesiastical solecism, five years ago, of marrying a High Church Episcopalian 
of the most advanced type. She was rich then, and has lately become much 
richer. Shortly after the later accession to her fortune, the Rev. I,. Zwinglius 
Sharpe (thus he registers his name at hotels), resigned all his offices in his native 
land and came abroad to rally from a combination of bronchitis and nervous pros- 
tration, which, various doctois say, might have been expected in the (altered) 
circumstances. With this aspersion we have nothing to do. Still, as one who 
has spent more than thirty years in church- and-charity work, I may express the 
doubt whether the friction of pastorate or professorship could have worn more 
seriously upon the nervous system of the average man than the continual conflict 
of opinion and belief which goes on between his spouse and himself. But Dr. 
Sharpe is many removes from the average man. 

They have left their carriage and stand below the projecting raiment of a 
round tower upon the outer wall. Close to the ground are sections of ancient 
Roman masonry; the tower is topped by a modern shed. The outlines of a win« 
dow, almost wholly blocked up with rubbish, appear below the rude building on 
the summit. 

' ' That, ' ' says our guide, 1 ' tradition points out as the window from which 
Paul was let down in a basket, as recorded in Acts, the ninth chapter and twenty- 
fifth verse." 

I cannot record that Dr. Sharpe pricks up his ears as the innocent remark 
enters them, for they are already red and bristling with the heat of argument. He 
turns energetically upon us. 

" I do hope," he says, " that as intelligent Christians of the nineteenth cen- 
tury, you will not credit this worthless — utterly worthless — tale concocted by 
monkish charlatans. Setting aside the extreme improbability that the dwellers 

(107) 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



109 



in the Damascus of that day would have regarded the spot as noteworthy, the 
masonry of the wall belongs so evidently to a later period that one is lost in sur- 
prise at the impudence of the attempt to identify the locality with the manner of 
the apostle's escape from his persecutors. And cannot you see, my good 
friends " — haranguing the guides of his party and of ours — " that you are guilty 
of folly, if not of mischief, in perpetuating the legend ? Not that I blame you as 
much as I blame the superstitious ignorance of the travelers who encourage you to 
repeat such stuff. ' ' 

Dr. Sharpe is tall and meagre, with a long face running down into a pointed 
red beard. He waves his arms like a windmill as he declaims. His wife is much 
below medium height and plump as a quail, with bright, beady eyes not unlike 
those of the same bird; her voice is a mild twitter, but we feel at once that for 
"staying power " she can be counted upon as no mean antagonist for her irascible 
husband. It may be the staying quality of the feather-bed that yields only to 
rebound, but it is " all there. ' ' 

" My love !" is the preface to h^r remonstrance — "where would the Church 
be now, but for these traditions ? When I see the unhappy effect produced upon 
your mind and spirits by incredulity, I am disposed to cling more closely to what 
holy men have transmitted to the generations following. For instance, you took 
no comfort whatever in our visit to the scene of St. Paul's conversion — and I had 
such a precious time !" 

" No comfort ! Where should I find satisfaction in a baseless legend, fabri- 
cated originally, I doubt not, on purpose to induce travelers to stop and buy 
refreshments at what, it is pretended, was an ancient resting-place of caravans 
from Jerusalem to Damascus. My good wife — " turning to us, as he says this, 
an audience being a vital necessity with men of his calibre and class — " my good 
wife formed her belief upon this, as upon other subjects of sacred history, by the 
help of pictures and goody-goody story-books. She has in her mind every detail 
of the scene as depicted by these; Saul — he wasn't even Paul then, my dear, much 
less a saint — tumbling from his horse upon a macadamized road, and his compan- 
ions in various attitudes of a like plight, when it is not certain, or even probable, 
that he was ever upon a horse in his life. It is more likely that he made the 
journey on foot, or upon a camel, or an ass. As to the location of the event, I 
dare say that each of you guides " — in sudden appea'^— " has heard one or more 
places named besides Katana, as the scene of Paul's conversion?" 

The men look at one another, and even grave David Jamal smiles as he 
answers that " Katana, on the ancient route to Jerusalem, has been for centuries 
pointed out as the place where the Apostle Paul was struck to the earth and had 
a direct revelation from Christ, our Lord. Other places have been suggested, but 
the best authorities agree upon Katana." 



no 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



I think there is something in the Christian dragoman's way of pronouncing the 
words, "Christ, our Lord," that tends to silence the disputants. At any rate, 
they do not resume the discussion until we are out of hearing. 

" I have heard of that gentleman before," observes David, as we drive away. 
" He is, I believe, very learned, and is collecting materials for a book upon the 
Holy Land. Up to this time, it is said, he has found nothing anywhere that he 
can believe in. His book will not be large." 




"PATJl/S WINDOW" IN DAMASCUS WAU,. 



Encouraged by our laugh, he adds: " I recollect his wife as one of a party of 
thirteen ladies I took through Palestine over twelve years ago. Miss De Credo 
was her name. I should have said, then, that she would have been a Roman 
Catholic by now. She set great store by relics and the like." 

We halt to examine another bit of city -wall, almost ruinous above, but rest- 
ing upon a sure foundation of Roman architecture. In spring-time, when the 
encompassing orchards are in bloom, Damascus may deserve, in the mind of the 
approaching traveler, some of the encomiums lavished upon it by poets and histo- 
rians of a former age. At this season, the "pearl" is undeniably dingy. No 
modern Mohammed will pause without any one of the four gates to compare the 
attractions of this, as an earthly Paradise, with those of the heavenly, much less 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



in 



turn away with a sigh of renunciation, saying: " Man can have but one Paradise 
and mine must not be here !" 

" Certainly not, if Damascus odors were the same then as now !" remarks 
my traveling companion. 

Diverging from the road skirting the city-wall are others leading between 
walled orchards into the outlying country, some stretching far away to cities 
whose names kindle wistful gleams in our eyes. Upon that leading to Bagdad — ■ 




"another bit of city wau,." 



distant, from thirty-five to forty days' journey, as a caravan travels, ten by the 
' 1 swift dromedaries ' ' that carry the mails — has halted a long string of camels. 
We check the driver to have a better look at the ugly and at present patient 
beasts, laden with who can say what wonders of that far and fabled mart ? The 
camel is notoriously uncertain of temper, captious, irritable, and sometimes so 
sullen as to refuse food for a fortnight at a time, during which period he must be 
muzzled to prevent him from biting his fellows and drivers. We hear of another 
peculiarity while we survey this group. 

"They are of the country and the desert," we are told, "and must be 



112 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



unloaded here, without the gates. Not being used to city streets and sights, they 
would be unmanageable if taken into the town." 

There they stand, with the outstretching necks that look at once supple and 
Stiff, meek and stubborn, awaiting the command to let themselves down groan- 
ingly upon their much- doubled- up knees that their burdens may be unstrapped — 
fascinating studies, if only because of their irredeemable hideousness and the 




GIBEON, THE SCENE OF SOLOMON'S SACKIFICE. 



physical idiosyncracies that set them apart from other quadrupedal domesticated 
creatures. I always stop to look at a camel in passing, and never without a 
shudder of wonder that is not admiration, and loathing which is antipathy, 

Passing through the city-gate into the street which is called Straight and, 
with the memory of the Rev. Zwinglius fresh in our thoughts, negativing the 
jesting proposition to visit, first the house of Ananias, and then the grave of 
Cain — this latter being a shapeless pile of stones cast together by the passers-by 
in execration of the first murderer — we alight presently at the entrance of the 
world-famous bazaars of Damascus. Hard-by yawns a mighty, blackened shell; 
the walls still standing and the roof arched above them, but through gaps in the 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



rude boarding filling up the doors, and through the empty window- frames, one 
sees what devastation has been wrought, and recently, by fire. The bazaars 
nearest to the ruin have not escaped the licking flames that burst from the win- 
dows. A stately minaret towers heavenward near to what was the great mosque 
of Damascus. 

" There was nothing in S} T ria like it," relates our guide. " Men came many 
miles — oh, very many — to pray here. They believed one prayer in this mosque 
to be worth thousands and tens of thousands said in another. And that God 
would leave this holy place standing for forty years after the world should be 
burned up, in order that those who had not yet found the Gate of Paradise might 
have a place for prayer. ' ' 

"How did it take fire?" 

The two dragomen exchange looks. One steps near and lowers his voice: 
' ' From the melting solder with which workmen were repairing the roof, say 
the Christians. Others " — avoiding in the crowd the mention of Mohammedans 
or Moslems — " will have it that the fire fell from heaven upon the Mosque because 
Christians were employed in building it after it was burned in part many years 
ago." 

We have just fairly entered one of the principal streets of the bazaars — a con- 
tinuation of that "which is called Straight" — when a roar as the sound of 
many — and musical — waters, draws our eyes to the tossing crowd filling the lower 
end. The guides have barely time to draw us within the shelter of a doorway 
when the human tide rolls up to our feet, choking the narrow thoroughfare — a 
hustling, struggling mass. Foremost are perhaps a hundred boys, clapping 
their hands high above their heads and screeching, rather than jxlling, what 
David translates in our ears as ' ' Praise to the Prophet ! " A herd of twice as many 
men is upon their heels, vociferating the same words, shaking tambourines high in 
the air and beating small drums while whirling them aloft. 

" What is it? A popular revolution?" we gasp, as the billows roll away in 
the distance, and the air settles about us in comparative quiet. 

Both guides smile, evidently in no wise excited by the demonstration that 
took our breath and well-nigh our senses away. 

"They are men and boys who have offered their sacrifices, without pay, to 
the government to build again the Great Mosque," replies a guide. " They go 
thus about the streets crying, ' Praise to the Prophet !' that others maybe moved 
to do likewise. We hear, to-day, that the Sultan will give generously, some say, 
more than one hundred thousand mejidie" — the Turkish dollar — " from his own 
purse toward the great work." 

A pursy Englishman, who fairly exhales his nationality, so obtrusive are his 

round-crowned hat, mutton-chop whiskers, red face and tweed suit, is crowded 

against us, and has the benefit of our explanation. 
8 



"4 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



" Rayly !" he utters, coolly. " Now, do you know, I took it to be a sort of 
Eastern Salvation Army, don't you know? The tambourines, drums, and all, 
look like it." 

The roar is not even a whisper by this time. Besides ourselves, and our 
Briton, nobody seems at all interested in the doings of the clamorous crowd. The 
fine-looking Turk, sitting cross-legged upon the counter of his stall over the way, 



[ 




TARSUS, THE BIRTHPLACE OF THE APOSTLE PAUL 



has dropped the lids upon his dark eyes with as fine an expression of boredom as 
could be achieved by an English exquisite at the height, or depth, of a London 
season. At the stall to his right, a customer is beating down the price of a 
narghileh (or water-pipe), with an amber mouthpiece, with no more apparent 
consciousness of the passage of the mob than of our observation of himself and 
his actions. 

"This is the Oriental calmness of which we have heard, all our lives," we 
soliloquize, ■ ' and these narrow, dirty lanes are the great bazaars ! 

"The poorer bazaars, of course?" we pronounce, in cheerful certainty of the 
reply. 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 115 

The Damascus guide does not catch our meaning. The question is put in a 
different form: 

' ' There are broader streets and finer shops in Damascus than these ?' ' 

To prepare ourselves for this expedition, we have been reading a chapter in 
" Mirage," a strangely sad story published perhaps a score of years ago, and a 
sentence is freshly distinct in our minds: 

"They were deep in the bazaars of Damascus — deep in those cool, dim, 
vaulted spaces, with the lustre of silks, the gleam of metal and porcelain about 
them, and the odor of gums and curious spices filling the dusty air." 

Certainly the air is dusty, after the rush of the not-clean mob described in a 
former paper, and there is an odor — there are more than a score of odors — that fill 
the vaulted space. If there be one sense which the traveler in the East comes to 
regard as superfluous and inconvenient, it is that of smell. If I refer repeatedly 
to Ca^s fact, it is because the pressure of the truth is never absent from us. Being 
told that the scene before us is a favorable specimen of what we are here to see, 
we resign ourselves to the Oriental odor, ' ' curious ' ' to the uninitiated, but 
freighted with no spice or gum with which our olfactories are acquainted, and set 
our eyes to work instead. 

We are in a network of narrow streets, none of which are twenty-five feet in 
width. L,ow, arched roofs cover them; the light breaking, here and there, 
through slits in the arch, in a deliberate, dreamy fashion essentially Oriental. 
As the sight becomes accustomed to it, we see that the glints brought out by the 
intermittent rays come from stalls piled and hung with silverware of every 
description. 

"The street of the silversmiths," Abraham observes. " The trade is in the 
hands of the Christians. The man over there has the same shop which his 
grandfather kept. The Christians, in former times, could not hold such property 
as cattle, houses and orchards, for it was often taken from them or destroyed by — 
those who were of a different race." 

(Again we notice the scrupulous avoidance of the word " Mohammedan," or 
"Moslem," in a public place, and speculate as to whether prudence or courtesy 
dictates the custom.) 

" Therefore, Christians usually are in trade — manufacturers, and like that." 

What are dignified by the name of shops are really stalls, such as line our 
markets at home, but enclosed on three sides. A movable door, a sort of wooden 
shutter — sometimes in one piece, sometimes in several — closes the front at night. 
When this is taken down, the shop is opened without other ceremony. A big 
window of one of our great dry goods stores would hold the entire stock-in-trade 
of any of these recesses, and leave room to spare. Upon the counter, or upon a 
divan behind it, the proprietor has tucked his slippered feet away in the folds of 



u6 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



the baggy cloth trousers which, I insist, are the reverse of graceful, and pulls 
slowly at the yards of flexible tube connecting the amber mouthpiece between his 
lips with a vessel exactly like the carafe, or water-bottle, used upon our dinner- 
tables, with the exception of the tobacco-pipe attachment. 

We are collecting — with the rest of the traveling 1 ' foreigners " — souvenir 
spoons, and mean to procure some in Damascus. The expression of the intention 
is all we have to do for the present. David steps to the front as the coveted 
articles are produced. The prospective vender is an acquaintance, na}^ more, a 
friend, for they kissed one another just now, and the Damascan addresses him as 
"Abou-Nassar," the "Father of Nassar." When a man becomes the proud 
owner of a son, he is thenceforth known among his intimates as that boy's father. 
Ten daughters may have preceded the youngster, and six brothers may follow 
him, but the parent continues to rejoice in the title of father of the first-born son. 

These are two friends, as I have said, but as the buyer's representative, the 
dragoman is transformed forthwith, until the sale is concluded, into the bitter 
enemy of his countryman. 

' 1 Never give the first price named ! " is the first lesson taught the foreign 
visitor. The sum may sound reasonable to us, but a cardinal principle of Eastern 
shopping is to believe and hold for certain that it is iniquitous, and the universal 
practice is to beat it down to at least one- third less. It matters nothing to our 
honest representative, who would not cheat his worst enemy of a penny, that the 
amount involved is only a franc, or, at the most, two. Figuratively, he girds up 
his loins, and rolls up his sleeves, and ' ' pitches in " for a wordy duel. The voices 
of both combatants rise, their gestures threaten each other's lives; one-tenth of the 
noise in an American shop would call in the police in force. 

Quite aware that it is all sound, and no fury, we lean back in the rush- 
bottomed chairs set outside for us in the open street — for sidewalks there are 
none — and give ourselves up to contemplation of the vistas stretching away from 
us on four sides. 

After the shadeless glare of the Damascus sunshine, we recognize the cool 
half-lights as grateful, and the occasional streams of radiance through the aper- 
tures in the roof bring out picturesque features in merchandise and costumes. 
At the far end of the street are shops wherein are manufactured the various stuffs 
here offered for sale. 

One street is given up wholly to the display of rugs; another to a bewildering 
succession of rings, curios, brass trays, cups, bowls and the like; another to 
mother-of-pearl tables of divers sizes, patterns and heights. A principal avenue 
exhibits on both sides " Franji " articles. The manufactured term, in universal 
use in this country, and referable, I think, to no known language, covers what- 
ever smacks of European or other Occidental usage, and is freely applied to all 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



"3 



sorts of innovations. It signifies, in the present instance, French, English 
German, Italian, and even American goods — calicoes from Manchester, tinware 
and cutlery (cheap) from the United States, colored glass from Baden-Baden 
and every variety of knick-knacks fro.: Paris. Several streets away from 
where we are awaiting the result of the pitched battle of Arabic tongues are 
the meaner quarters devoted to the sale of seeoud-hand clothing — it is needless 

to say by whose hands. 

It may gratify their 
American sisters to 
know that those whose 
lot seems to us hard 
enough without such 
a barbarous restriction 
are not debarred from 
doing their own shop- 
ping in Damascus. 

Old as is the be- 
clouded ' ' Pearl of the 
East, ' ' the ' ' inferior 
sex ' ' has the advan- 
tage in this particular 
over Nazareth, Nab- 
lous, Gaza, Jenen and 
Jaffa, where native 
women, veiled or un- 
veiled, are never al- 
lowed to visit shop or 
market-place. Even 
the Christian matrons 
must apply to this oc- 
cupation, so dear to the 
feminine heart, the in- 
junction of the Great Bachelor (or widower?) of Tarsus, and ask their husbands 
at home concerning the latest sweet thing in jewelry, and the " Franji" gown- 
patterns put up in decorated boxes in Paris, and sent eastward at the end of the 
season for the delectation of hareems and Greek, or Roman Catholic, or Protestant 
households. 

How do they support existence in such circumstances ? 

Fathers, brothers and husbands, in unconscious prevision of Mr. Edward 
Bellamy's ''Looking Backward," select and bring home samples of cloth, silk, 




IT IS NEKDIvKSS TO SAY BY WHOSK HANDS. 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



etc., and the secluded wife, daughter or sister chooses from among these such 
stuffs as she imagines, from the bits laid before her, would be handsome and 
becoming. Those who know how unlike the sample is to the effect of the fabric 
when seen ' ' in the piece, ' ' especially as displayed by the cunning hands of a 
trained salesman, can guess how frequent and sore are the disappointments when 
the purchases are unfolded in the women's apartments. 

That tall woman, whose mufnings cannot conceal the outlines of a figure 
uncommonly good for a land where corsets are unknown, and a 1 ' neat fit ' ' is 





SOUDANESE BOATMEN ON THE NIIJB. 

almost as rare, makes as serious a business of her bargaining as if she had the 
interests of a brace of defenceless ' ' foreigners ' ' upon her conscience. She stands 
all the while, we note. The uncompromising rush-bottomed chair would seem to 
be reserved for foreigners. She haggles over a pair of silver filagree bracelets, 
fitting them upon a round, brown wrist, and slipping them excitedly up and 
down, chattering volubly in Arabic in a voice so dissonant that her "mendeel" 
shivers, rather than wavers, before the torrent. It is dark blue, with red poppies, 
larger than life, ' powdered ' ' over it. All that we see of her face is the indication 



THE FI^AG OF THE ORIENT. 



119 



(to use a technical phrase) of two big, black eyes in the upper part. She can 
discern clearly not only the countenance of her natural enemy, the tradesman, 
but defects in the workmanship of the trinkets she is trying on, for she calls his 
attention sharply to a misshapen link, tears them from her wrists, tosses them 
disdainfully upon the counter, gathers the voluminous ' ' izzar ' ' about her and 
turns away with the air of one resolved to endure no more imposition. She has 
taken two or three steps when the merchant, picking up the discarded ornament, 
says something quietly and indifferently. As indifferently she pauses and answers 
him over her shoulder. 

A minute later she is again at the counter; the salesman is folding the 
bracelets in tissue-paper, and she — still as if she would rather leave than take 
them — is extracting from her purse the sum finally agreed upon between them. 




BANNU, IN WAZARISTAN, NEAR THE) SCENE) OF THE RECENT MASSACRE. 



The affair is a farce throughout, and is repeated often enough to lose all 
novelty, not to say charm, were the disposition to make a bargain less obstinate 
in the human breast. The buyer knows perfectly well that the ' * asking-price " — 
a term with which one speedily becomes familiar over here — is as much above the 
real value of the article offered as what he, on his part, proposes to give for it is 
below it; he is also certain that somewhere between the two will be the final point 
of settlement. 

The responsive yawn is arrested midway by David's abrupt termination of 
hostilities. He has pushed aside the spoons, and, generous indignation in every 
line of his visage, motions us to follow him. 



120 



THE Fly AG OF THE ORIENT. 



" But " — expostulates one of the unsophisticated — " since they are what we 
want, and not really dear, would it not be better to pay his price ?" 

"I,ike the rest of them" — enunciates the dragoman, judicially, without 
specifying who are included in the pronoun — "he thinks travelers are made of 
money. You will get the spoons. He will call us back." 

The spoons are in my trunk, and are probably worth a half-franc apiece less 
than was paid for them after the profuse expenditure of breath, nervous force and 
minutes. Shopping, always wearisome work to busy people, gathers new horrors 
from such accessories. By the time we have halted here fifteen minutes, and there 
twenty, and somewhere else ten, we are thankful to be out of the covered arcades, 
and to see the unobstructed blue overhead in a street where we meet one wing of 
the boyish troop who passed us an hour ago. They march more soberly now, but 
still chant the sing-song, " Praise the Prophet !" 

The sun is low and red upon the horizon as we, for the second time, drive in 
at the eastern gate of the aged city. A single camel is left in the open space 
without, where we saw the caravan at noon. He lies so prone and abject upon 
the earth, his neck stretched out to a length so incredible, that we are divided 
between the desire to pity and to deride him. His acknowledged master stands 
above him brandishing a pair of shears; one side of the forlorn beast is already so 
naked as to put Sterne's shorn lamb to the blush, and as the crimson sunlight 
strikes athwart him, the "stranded ship of the desert" looks abnormally and 
inconceivably hideous — even for a country camel. 



CHAPTER XII. 



BY THE SEA OF GALILEE. 




'HER FAT PUPPY. 



[WAY from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew, James, John, Peter 
and Philip, we took a handful of curious shells, as black as 
coal. The beach is strewed with them, and they are so unlike 
the gray and brown we find at other points of the sea of Galilee 
that we cherish fanciful associations connecting them with the 
silent desolation pervading this coast. ' 1 City, ' ' there is none. 
A few half-buried stones mark the site of the town built by the 
Philip who married Salome a little while after she danced off the 
head of John the Baptist. He was the most respectable member 
of the Herod tribe, we recall in picking up our shells, but we 
look in vain for the handsome tomb built here for him, about the 
time that the Cross which was to draw all nations unto it was lifted up on Calvary. 

Capernaum lies a short hour's ride from Bethsaida. The horses pick their 
way over the pebbly beds of what will be torrents in a couple of months, and eye 
longingly patches of coarse grass, greening where the stones are not so thick; we 
pass a ruined Roman aqueduct used in the days of the Herods for conveying 
water to the fine cities they built upon the sea called by their Emperor's name. 
In the immediate vicinity of Capernaum, reeds and flags must have hidden the 
fallen stones last spring and summer, for they rustle drearily in the wind moaning 
up from the sea, and tufts of dried herbage define the outline of such fragments of 
limestone as have not been utilized in building the Roman Catholic convent we 
see rising up in the background. It is unfinished, but there are no workmen to 
be seen to-day. By the time we have alighted, the entire population of Caper- 
naum is drawn up in hospitable order to welcome us. Pitched where, for aught 
we can say to disprove it, Matthew's custom-house may have stood, is a small 
black tent, and from the smoky recesses emerge a Bedouin, as venerable and 
benign as Abraham; his wife, throwing a fold of her dark blue nondescript 
garment modestly over her chin as she comes; a daughter of fifteen, or there- 
abouts, bashful where her mother is modest, and the prettiest native child we have 
seen, a girl of four, whose conviction that we will covet and probably steal her fat 
puppy, overcomes curiosity during our stay. 

(121) 



122 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



The patriarch is the care-taker of the sacred precincts. The smile with which 
we hear his office named is exchanged for disappointed looks upon discovering 
that what we especially desired to see is nowhere to be found. 

" Yet it was certainly here last year," David says, his soul divided between 
surprise, sorrow and wrath. " If I am not mistaken, Dr. Geikie speaks of it in 
his book, and Dr. Talmage will have told you how impressed he was by it when 
he was in Capernaum, three years ago. It is more than pity that some of those 
thieves who are all the while hanging about such places have stolen it. I say it ! 



«ven if it has been built into those walls over there ' ' — nodding ominously in the 
direction of the unfinished convent. 

After a moment of painful silence, he resumes: " You see, it helped to make 
it all so plain ! I have stood here, many times, and imagined just how He looked 
when He said it. It was very interesting to think that His eyes must have rested 
upon it often, and that He may have pointed to it when He said, ' Our fathers did 
eat manna in the desert ' — as you will read in John, sixth chapter, thirty -first verse, 
and again in the verse forty-ninth, ' Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, 
and are dead. This is the bread which came down from heaven '—meaning 




< < 



THE ENTIRE POPULATION OF CAPERNAUM. 




(123) 



I2 4 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



Himself. It is all about the manna and the living bread, you see. Who can 
doubt what put it into the mind of Christ, our Lord, to preach upon that subject 
in or before the synagogue that used to stand hereabouts !" 

We stroll up and down wistfully, musing, while the population of Our Lord's 

"own city" watch 
us, mystified, but 
silent. Nobody 
explains to them 
why we have come 
or why we are dis- 
satisfied. A query 
in Arabic has 
proved that they 
know nothing of 
the disappearance 
of the massive 
block of lime- 
stone, probably 
part of the facade 
of the noble syna- 
gogue now leveled 
to the earth. 
Upon it was a bas- 
relief of the pot of 
manna kept with- 
in the Ark, and 
afterward in the 
First Temple. It 
would have been 
easy, in looking 
upon it, to repro- 
duce in fancy the 
scene referred to 
by our guide. 

"The Bible is the best Baedeker for Palestine," says Alcides, for the hun- 
dredth time, and we seek for ourselves seats upon the fallen stones to read up in 
our invaluable " International Teachers' Edition," the passage indicated under the 
head " Capernaum." 

One cries out presently, " Why may not this synagogue have been that built 
by the centurion who loved the Jewish nation ?" 




IT WAS CERTAINLY HERE I<AST YEAR. 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



It is not unlikety, since the bits of carving from which we proceed to clear the 
dead grass show skill and taste. The curling acanthus leaf of a Corinthian 
capital is embedded in a tough tussock, and there is a richly sculptured corner 
that may have belonged to a frieze. 

"And this is the Capernaum, once exalted unto heaven by these and many 
other wonderful works — now ! ' ' 

We gaze with new comprehension of the story and the prophecy, upon the 
grass-grown stones, the black tent that makes the picture more, not less, desolate, 
and in the background, the useless convent, where able-bodied men will patter 
prayers in an unknown tongue, and exalt above the Divine Son, the very human 
mother who broke in upon the most solemn sermon that has come down to us from 
His lips, by the request that He would shake off the crowd hanging upon the 
inspired words, and come out to speak to her. " His own city," with none to 
take pleasure in her stones, or to favor the dust thereof ! 

The folded tents, the camp-equipage and mules have gone forward toward 
Tiberias when we return to Bethsaida, but David and Alcides alight to survey the 
ground and make sure that nothing has been overlooked, consigning Dervish and 
Massoud to the care of Serkeese. In consequence of which misplaced confidence we 
have a diversion from the sober reverie that has held us since we left Capernaum. 

Massoud is not a colt in 3 r ears. He will never be otherwise than coltish in 
heart. There is a clatter of hoofs among the irregular boulders and pebbles, a 
jocund neigh, and Serkeese stares open-mouthed after the fleeting steed, letting 
fall Dervish's bridle in the excess of his astonishment. No fences obstruct the 
gambols of the merry beast, who would have a companion in his scamper were 
Dervish as light of heart and heels as himself. For one mortal hour he leads 
three bipeds a dance up and down the beach which none of them can forget. At 
every hundred yards or so, he stops to laugh in the perspiring faces of the pursuers, 
waiting until a hand is almost upon his bridle before he throws up head and hoofs 
together and trots gently out of reach. Viciousness is as far removed from the 
heart of the little horse as the intention to surrender himself voluntarily to any of 
the trio. Each mentally recalls the story of a similar escapade upon the plain of 
Esdraelon when the tricky creature eluded capture for twelve hours, keeping the 
whole party waiting upon his pleasure. 

He blunders at length, when even the solitary looker-on appreciates that there 
is a time to laugh, and a time to refrain from laughing; takes a wrong turn and 
is followed by David into a little pass forming what is, in sporting phrase, "a 
pocket." 

" He cannot do justice to the subject !" quotes Alcides, aside, as, having seen 
his passenger again in the saddle, the dragoman receives Dervish from the hand 
of the abashed cause of the misadventure, with never a syllable of comment. 



126 THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 

" A fool uttereth all his mind; but a wise man keepeth it in until afterward." 

This particular wise man has something to say by and by, and, as usual, 
something pertinent. 

' ' We have lost time, and shall be caught in the rain before we can get into 
camp. ' ' 

By the time we draw rein upon the slope — green even in winter — where 
tradition says our Lord commanded the five thousand men, women and children to 




A MODERN FISHING-BOAT ON LAKE GENNESARET. 

sit down upon the grass, and fed them by the hands of His disciples with the 
miraculously-multiplied loaves and fishes, the sky is one cloud, dark-gray and 
sullen, the lake upon our left a gloomier reflection of the pall above it, and stirring 
uneasily in an occasional flaw of wind. 

The use of the word "sea" misleads many as to the size of this, the most 
celebrated sheet of water upon the globe. I is, in fact, but fifteen miles in length 
and half as wide, and, apart from storied interest, as unremarkable as scores of 
mountain lakes in America whose names are not known beyond the special town- 
ships that border them. 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



127 



It is here, as the surface begins to be pitted with large, slow drops of rain, 
that we listen to a true tale confirmatory of the Scriptural account of the storms 
which overtook the ' ' little ship ' ' in which our E-ord slept, his head upon a pillow 1 
in the boat which the toilsome rowing of the disciples could not bring to land, 
until, in the fourth watch of the night, the pressure of His feet stilled the billows, 
and His voice rebuked the " contrary ' ' wind. 

But a year ago a tempest rushed down Lake Gennesaret so fierce and sudden 
as to tear from their foundations and wash into the sea thirty houses from the 
town of Tiberias. Now, as of old, the rage of wind and wave is intense and 
short-lived. 

Tiberias can never be comely. Seen under a dripping sky, it is repulsive. 
The alleys that do duty as streets are lined, in some quarters, with booths or 



r 

1 




THE CAMP. 



stalls, in others with mean dwellings, all dirty- white in the sunshine, dirtier gray 
when wet. The inhabitants have retreated to the rear of the shops, even where 
the streets are covered with matting or with leaky wooden roofs, and eye us 
listlessly as we pass, the horses plash through filth made liquid by the rain, and 
coursing in vile smelling rivulets down the middle of the street. The situation of 
the town, and the general noisomeness remind one of Jaffa, although Tiberias is 
much the smaller of the two. 

Pleasant exceedingly is it to arrive at the camp pitched beyond the out- 
skirting houses and so near the edge of the lake that the wash of the water 
upon the banks promises a lullaby throughout the dark hours. By the time 
luncheon is disposed of, the rain abates, and we sally forth for a walk upon the 
wet stones. 



128 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



The custom of washing the bodies of the dead in the Sea of Tiberias is of 
immemorial antiquity, and was, until recently, almost a daily occurrence. Corpses 
were brought from the surrounding country and across the lake, and committed to 
a sect whose profession it is to prepare them for burial by these ablutions. The 
details of the operation are too disgusting for publication, the process of evisceration 
being at once ingenious and revolting. Not until the water pumped into the body 
leaves it as clear as when it entered, is the work considered complete. As described 




to us, the business is unpleasantly like that of preparing a fowl for cooking, even to 
breaking certain small bones of the limbs. Our informant, a resident of the town, 
although a foreigner and a Christian, adds the gratifying intelligence that a strenu- 
ous movement is on foot to break up the practice altogether, and that such success 
has followed it as to intimidate those who have made it a means of livelihood. 
The world moves — even in Syria. 

The sun sets gloriously over the lake, some peculiar effect of refraction bringing 
the opposite shore nearer and nearer as the amber glow deepens. We look out 
upon a sea of glass mingled with fire; the white tents are washed with yellow 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



129 



light; there is not breeze enough to lift the American flag floating from the peak 
of the largest of the group, and we see in tremulous yet distinct outline, to our 
right across the water, the roof-shaped " steep place " down which the herd rushed 
violently into now placid waves. 

Fish, fresh from the lake, follow the soup at dinner. The water teems with 
them, as when the weight of an hundred-fifty-and-thiee. strained, without breaking, 
a mesh of the net cast at the Lord's command upon the right side of the ship. 
We talk, over the savory mess, of the story that the hook sometimes brings up one 
oddly marked with a black spot upon the head and under the throat in com- 
memoration of the grasp of Peter's thumb and finger upon the prize that yielded 
up the piece of money. 

"A 'stater,' — in value two shillings and a sixpence," we gather from our 
" Palestine guide book," and consult dragoman and John-of-the-many-names, as 
to the authenticity of the tale. 

Neither of them has ever seen such a fish. David, however, has heard of it 
before from Mrs. Sharpe. 

" When she was Miss De Credo, of course," he subjoins, with no intention of 
being satirical. "She quite believed in it." 

After dinner we again seek the beach. The new moon sinks below the low 
hills of the horizon ; the swish of the wavelets blends musically with the low hum 
of talk from the camp behind us. 

And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea, 
When the blue waves roll nightly on dark Galilee, 

repeats a dreamy voice. " Byron never saw Galilee. But the stars and the sheen 
are here." 




r 




CHAPTER XIII. 



WHERE HE WAS BROUGHT UP. 

E have never been so nearly in sympathy with Dr. Sharpe, or so intol- 
erant with his wife's devout credulity, as after visiting the Latin 
and Greek churches built above the spots where the Virgin Mary re- 
ceived the visit of Gabriel and the announcement of the great glory 
to be bestowed upon her. 

Each is in a crypt, and going first to that of the Greek church, we look 
respectfully, if not reverently, at the dark, damp chamber, supplied with altar and 
the usual paraphernalia of the underground or the upper-world shrine. — candles, 
artificial flowers and other tawdry ornaments. We are in a sort of cellar, the 
stone walls of which are grim with time. A well yawns in the floor; beyond it is 
a locked gate. The sacristan thrusts his arm between the bars, and throws the 
light of a torch upon a flight of steps leading up into the darkness. 

Our guide mechanically translates the Arabic that gurgles from his tongue: 
" This church stands upon the site of the house of the Blessed Virgin. This 
was her kitchen. Here she was busy at work when the angel appeared to her and 
said, ' Hail, Mary ! thou that art highly favored, for thou hast found favor with 
God.' The fountain burst forth from the rock in celebration of the event." 

A cup is lowered into the well; we drink thereof, cross the palm of the sac 
ristan with a piece of Turkish silver, and mount to the surface of the earth, obedi- 
ently following our leader to another church, where the same story is told, almost 
word for word, of a second subterranean chamber and spring. 

A little heart-sick and a good deal disgusted, we thread the public ways of 
the " white city , ' ' discouragingly new in appearance, and long, as we have often 
and elsewhere longed, for something that will restore the lost sympathy with what 
the place should recall. 

" Mary and Joseph lived here / ' we say to ourselves and one another. " Here 
was the scene of the Annunciation ; hence Mary went into the hill country in haste 
— perhaps up that slope over there — to visit Elizabeth. Here, her Son grew in 
favor with God and man. Here, cut to the quick by the home truths spoken to 
them by Him in later years, the townspeople with whom He had been so popular 
as a youth hurried Him to the brow of the hill on which the city is built, and 
would have ended His ministry then and there but for a miracle. ' ' 

(131) 




132 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



All this we know and believe, but cannot feel. 

At a turn of the street we are confronted with something that alters the cur- 
rent of discontented meditation. A lad stands just without the threshold of a car- 
penter's shop. His tunic of blue serge is girt at the waist with a red sash; red 
slippers are upon the unstockinged feet; the red tarboosh, or fez, worn by. all 
Turkish subjects, sits jauntily upon short, fair curls. At sight of the leveled kodak, 
he laughs, and his hands chafe one another nervously. From the recesses of the 
shop, black as midnight when 
one looks in from the outer light 
made more glaring by reflection 
from the white houses, a voice 
calls in not unkindly admonition; 
the boy laughs again, brightly 
and fearlessly, in moving away 
to his work. A bench extends 
from the door to the rear of the 
windowless shop, and two men, 
one turbaned, the other wearing 
the tarboosh, are busy about it. 
Our lad drops flat upon the 
ground, crosses his legs under 
him to gouge a square hole in a 
block into which a beam is to be 
mortised. He handles the chisel 
deftly, and, now that he is at it, 
so diligently that he does not 
give us another look. But for 
the modern bench, the picture 
must be very like that which has 
been a theme beloved of such 
artists as Holman Hunt and the 
earlier masters. Presently, the elder of the men, who stands near the door, glances 
around, his notice attracted by our shadows upon the floor, and touches, first his 
forehead, then his heart, bowing profoundly: 

" Naharak said!" (Peace be unto you) he says gravel}*. 

"And unto you !" we instruct our interpreter to reply. The carpenter is 
an old man, but hale, with clear eyes and a full white beard. 

Not a bad model for a Joseph in a " Holy Family," we agree, after watching 
him for a minute longer, taking in all the accessories of the tableau, even to the play 
of a stray sunbeam upon the yellow shavings curling from the bench to the floor. 




HE LAUGHS AND HIS HANDS CHAFE ONE ANOTHER. : 



THE Fly AG OF THE ORIENT. 



133 



There is fascination in the scene, and soothing. We are brought again into 
touch with a past that filled our minds at the first sight of the hillside town. Thus 
might the supposed father and docile Son, "subject" to all the conditions of a 
Galilean artisan's life, have toiled together for many a day and week during the 
thirty years of preparation for His ministry and His death. 

"Mar salaami!" (Good-bye) — we call out at length, moving on, and be- 
tween the deeper tones of the two men rises the silvery treble of the apprentice: 

* 1 Mar salaami /' ' 

" In what language did our Saviour speak? " questions Alcides, suddenly. 

The query is apparently new to David Jamal and our other escort, a Nazarene 
Christian and a graduate of Beirut College, a fine, intelligent young fellow, by the 
way, and an honor to his Alma Mater. It seems quite certain, after some minutes' 
talk, that in a country where customs have changed so little in nineteen cen- 
turies that one can hardly take a dozen steps without seeing or hearing something 
illustrative of Biblical history — the peasantry at least may use the dialect familiar 
to the household of Joseph, the carpenter. Did the musical phrase of farewell 
that lingers in our ear often pass His tongue ? 

We are still talking of it when another turn brings us into an open square 
that must be the rallying-point for both sexes of all classes, so alive is it with 
movement and murmur. Right before us is a group of children, chiefly boys, of 
varying ages, arrested in some game by the abrupt appearance of strangers. The 
foremost and tallest boy lays a reassuring hand about the neck of a mere baby 
who is his charge, and blinks inquisitively at us in the broad sunshine; in the 
background on his right hand stands a much smaller child with a face of singular 
beauty. It is not possible to regard the children, especially the boj r s of Nazareth, 
with indifference, and there is something in this encounter that dizzies one by the 
swift rush of association. 

" What do they know of the child Jesus ?' ' we interrogate the young Nazarene 
student. 

' 1 Those who have Christian parents think and speak of Him as do the chil- 
dren in your land and other Christian countries. The rest know little of Him 
and care nothing for Him. We have here Sunday and day schools in which the 
Bible is taught, and the story of our Lord's life and death is well known to the 
members of the Latin and Greek churches." 

More children ! The soft thud of their bare feet upon the pavement is hushed 
as they halt and huddle together in the exact focus of the insatiable kodak — 
neither timid nor bold, but moved by a common desire to inspect and make ac- 
quaintance with us. They are healthy, well-formed and evidently well cared for. 
In all Nazareth, as we note with gratification, we see not one deformed child, or 
one professional beggar of tender years. All this may signify less than we fancy, 



134 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



but, without quite denning the sentiment to ourselves, we are glad that these 
things are so. 

" The fountain of the Virgin," says our guide, and it is not in tourist-nature 
to withhold the exclamation—" How many more?" We change our tone at a 
second glance. No monkish fable of kitchen and miraculous gush of living streams 
clings about the one perennial well in a district mainly dependent upon rain- 
cisterns for a supply of water. For hundreds and hundreds of years this fountain 




l 'A GROUP OF CHILDREN." 

has borne the name by which the world knows it, and even Dr. Sharpe cannoi 
deny the probability that it was here when Mary kept her husband's house in 
Nazareth, and her Boy ran by her side in street and market-place, or clung shyly 
to her skirts, as that pretty toddler across the square steadies his trial steps by 
holding with both hands to his mother's izzar. The water leaps from a spout in 
the face of the wall into a stone trough, escaping thence into a tank. An arch is 
built above it, and steps lead down tc tank and trough. These steps are crowded 
with women, some rubbing out, and some rinsing clothes as composedly as if the 
open archway were a back laundry at home; others bearing down empty jars 



THE Fly AG OF THE ORIENT. 



*35 



in their hands to be filled at the spout, or trudging up the wet stairs with full 
vessels upon their heads. They chatter cheerily among themselves, and the most 
notable are in no hurry to hie them back to home and indoor labor. Of all mar- 
ketable possessions, time is least considered in the East. 

Sometimes, as we are not surprised to hear, there are wrangles over the com- 
mon wash-tub, and quarrels as to precedence in the matter of filling the great 



earthen jars. In the sunny noon of to-day good humor prevails, and sociability 
is at high tide. 

Mary was a peasant and working-woman like these. We check ourselves, as 
if guilty of irreverence, in wondering if she bore the narrow-necked "pitcher" 
upon her head with the audacious grace of that laughing girl who does not touch 
it with her hand, and if she adjusted it, before mounting the steps, upon a many- 
folded cloth such as the handsome woman down there has interposed between her 
veiled head and the dripping vessel. Yet — and again — the highly-favored among 
women was a daughter of the people, and her Son, at thirty-three years of age, 
had not where to lay his head. 





-.4 



KIRJATH JEARIM, THE RESTING PLACE OF THE ARK. 



136 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



A rhythmic murmur hums up the street leading to the open space about the 
Virgin's Fountain; the women cease their gossip; the children run off in the direction 
of the sound, and we follow more leisurely. All recognize the tuneless chant with 
which the mourners go about the streets. It is a Eatin funeral, and the proces- 
sion is led by a fat priest in full canonicals. An acolyte, clad in what looks like a 
white dressing-sacque, swings a censer at his side. The coffin, borne upon the 
shoulders of friends or neighbors, is of a vivid scarlet with white bars crossing it. 
Behind a little company of what we take to be relatives and acquaintances, six 

, , —5 




MODERN" NAZARETH. 

cowled friars walk two-and-two. They are stalwart of frame and bearded up to 
the eyes; upon their large feet are strapped leathern sandals. Not a woman is 
seen in the band of mourners or among the lookers-on that straggle after the bier 
into the church. 

We remain without the burial-ground until the short service is over. Church 
and cemetery are on the slope of the hill which rises far behind them. The whole 
town has the air of holding on for its life to the declivity. Every house is literally 
founded upon a rock, and the circumstance is but one of the numberless proofs 




(137) 



138 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



daily laid before our eyes of the care with which the Nazarene Teacher studied 
the world in which He was brought up, and His tact in presenting to the ' 1 com- 
mon people ' ' analogies and types drawn from the life He shared with them. 

The grave is partly dug, partly hewn in the stony ground, and the bright red 
coffin, containing, we are told, the body of a young man, is set down upon the 
pile thrown up beside the mouth of the pit. The throng, augmented by many 
who have gathered from all quarters, closes about it, and the prayer committing 
dust to dust is droned above it. Until now, all has been conducted as quietly as 
in an English churclryard, but at the conclusion of the sendee, the father, who 
has stood at the head of the grave, motionless, with folded arms and averted face, 
casts himself with an "exceeding loud and bitter cry," upon the coffin, and 
clutches it frantically. His friends close in about him, and with the feeling that 
we have no right to gaze upon a scene that has become exquisitely painful, we 
hurry down the hill. 

Somewhere, on these steep slopes, the mortal remains of our Lord's ancestors 
moldered back to clay ages ago, and His pious foster-father was laid to rest, 
perhaps by the loving hands of Him who wept at the grave of Lazarus, and in 
the death-agony committed His widowed mother to the care of His best-beloved 
disciple. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

FROM NAIN TO JEZREEL. 

"*HE leaves of our Bible turn heavily, being damp with 
coming rain, as, guided by the 4 'Biblical Gazetteer" at the 
back, we look up Luke vii. 11-15, and read that on the day 
succeeding the healing of the centurion's servant, Our Lord 
"went into a city called Nain, and many of his disciples 
went with him and much people. ' ' 

' ' Now when he came nigh unto the gate of the city, 
behold there was a dead man carried out, the only son of his mother and she was 
a widow, and much people of the city was with her." 

" Where is the city?" we interrupt the reading to inquire. David points to 
a cluster of wretched huts, walled with clay and roofed with straw plastered over 
with mud. 

" A Moslem village !" we pronounce decidedly, as the scent of low-hanging 
smoke from hovel-fires is brought down by the moist wind. 

Two kinds of fuel are in general use in such hamlets, chaff, and cakes of 
dried camel's manure, the latter predominating in regions where the ungainly 
" ship of the desert " is brought into the service of man. One of the most impor- 
tant branches of woman's labor in these circumstances is collecting the manure, 
molding it into flat cakes, and spreading it to dry upon stones, walls, and house- 
tops. I have seen roofs literally tiled with the malodorous combustible, and whole 
rods of stone-wall caked with it. 

We smell chaff now, and prefer it. 

"Did I tell you," remarks Alcides, reining back Massoud into a conversa- 
tional walk, "what Rev. Mr. Jamal, the Nazareth pastor, said of chaff fires? In 
the village ovens they never go out, day or night, but smolder and smoke con- 
tinually. He says that is the meaning of the ' unquenchable fire,' into which the 
chaff is to be cast — the fire that is not allowed to go out." 

"Quite so, sir !" This from David, who is within ear-shot. "Matthew, third 
chapter and twelfth verse. Likewise Luke, the third chapter and seventeenth 
verse. They are the words of John the Baptist. The end of chaff in this country 
is to bt burned. I do not know what the poorer people would do without it." 

We are gazing at the knot of poor cabins that look as if a sweeping rain 
might wash them down into the plain some winter night, and marveling that no 
sign of a walled town remains, by the gate of which the funeral train may have 

(i39) 




140 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



emerged on the way to the rocky tombs we are told lie further down, and not so 
remote from the old Nazareth road as the ruins of the city — when something 
moves quickly across the lower plain directly within our field of vision. Four 
men hold aloft a misshapen burden, and half a dozen others keep pace with 
them in the long lope, swifter than a slow run would be. Serkeese grunts and 

. sa ys something we 

I judge to be con- 
temptuous. 

David trans- 
lates: 

' ' He says ' they 
have done up the 
dead man to look 
like our luncheon 
tent ' — and the boy 
is right. ' ' 

The luncheon- 
tent being swung 
across the very 
mule the ' ' boy ' ' be- 
strides at this mo- 
ment, we can testify 
to the truth of the 
criticism. It is, 
nevertheless, a 
human body which 
the "fellaheen " 
(Syrian peasants) 
are carrying to the 

most desolate tract of a territory unrelieved by tree or shrub for many acres. 
Turning our horses in the direction the}^ have taken, we come up with them as 
they deposit the figure, swathed in coarse matting, upon the naked earth, and 
begin with rude mattocks to make a hole among the stones — I cannot call the 
business " grave-digging." There are no mounds in what we now perceive is a 
cemetery, but ovals of round stones are set thickly all over the place, each desig- 
nating a grave, and at long intervals we descry a low, upright block of granite, 
unlettered. The man who directs the gruesome task answers readily and civilly 
the few questions put through the interpreter. 

" It is a child who has died. A boy of eight. He has escaped much trouble. 
He is better off here than living. Allah is good !' ' 




THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



141 



Other figures appear from behind the shoulders of the bleak hills, women, 
bare-legged, but shrouded as to heads and faces in the dark-blue cotton mantles 
that uniform matrons and girls of the lower classes. They wa 1 k well and fleetly, 
and, approaching the grave-makers, without evincing the slightest curiosity at sight 
of us, seat themselves upon the ground about the motionless bundle and begin to 
sob in a subdued key, breaking finally into a chant, without beginning, middle, 
end, or the remotest suggestion of musical idea. The men pay no attention what- 
ever to the performance. We characterize it silently as "the people making a 
noise,'' very much the same, doubtless, as was kept up by the " much people of 
the city," winding down from the Nain which is no more, when the Master's 
hand fell upon the bier and those that bare it stood still. One woman, as 
we note, neither sobs nor chants, but, her muffled face bowed upon her knees, 
sits at the head of the dead boy, motionless, as if as deaf as himself to all that 
passes. 

David explains aside that the women of the neighborhood take advantage of 
each funeral to visit the graves of their own relatives, and shows us other and 
smaller groups, now arriving and scattered over the face of the hill. All crouch 
upon the earth soaked by yesterday's rain, and the humid air makes the dissonant 
croon of each family, " mourning by itself apart," audible to all the rest. Almost 
under Massoud's forefeet, one woman has thrown herself face downward beside a 
iong, egg-shaped round of stones, and cries out, over and over, the same form of 
words to the newly-turned earth. David hearkens attentively, and interprets, line 
by line, in his grave undertone. Over against this translation, Alcides — having 
what he chooses to call, " a fatal facility for rhyme" — pencils a metrical version 
almost as literal: 

I arose and came to the grave, at the breaking of day. 

To the grave on the barren hillside where Abou, my husband, lay; 

I called on him by his name, but no answer came again; 

Once more I repeated the cry, but repeated it in vain. 

No dear voice answered my cry, from the rough, forbidding stones. 
' He sleeps too deep beneath the earth to hark the widow's moans. 
Who will help his children now, since my calls are all unheard ? 
O, form in the grave there, among the rocks ! answer a single word ! 

The workmen step out of the shallow hole they have scooped, and lay the 
attocks aside. Another relay covers the bottom of the pit with stones, and lays 
e uncoffined body upon them. Earth is thrown in until it is nearly level with 
he surface, and a second layer of larger stones to hinder the depredations of 
'ackals and hyenas; more earth, which is beaten hard, and the ring of great 
ebbles defines the last home of the little fellow who ' ' has escaped much 
rouble." 



142 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT, 



We were surprised, but not shocked, to learn that our informant — the dignified 
man in a brown-and- white ' 1 abieh ' ' and gray beard— is the father of the dead 
boy. While the grave is filling, an aged man, whom we take to be a priest, sits 
near by upon a gravestone and mutters fast some form of prayer, his palms 
outward. Four old men respond, when he pauses for breath, their hands outspread 
in like manner. 

Now that all is over, the priest rises, and approaching the father, kisses him 
solemnly upon both cheeks, an example imitated by all the men present. The 
mother has not stirred, nor has any one spoken to her that we have been able to 
see, when we ride away and resume our journey. 

The funeral must have drawn to a centre all the population 
of the surrounding country, for during the next two hours we pass 
no human being except a swarthy well-built ' ' fellaheen ' ' who is 
sowing grain in a field lately scratched over by the wooden 
plough used by the so-named husbandmen of Palestine. 
He has made a 1 ' lap ' ' of his outer garment, and it is full of 
grain. There is promise of an abundance of rain to settle 
the furrows, and he may be that phenomenon in this old 
land — a "forehanded" man. 

Tabor lifts a gently rounded crest upon our left, and 
the wide plain passed an hour ago was the field in which 
Barak and Deborah overcame Sisera. Whenever we rise 
out of the occasional 1 ' dips ' ' in the road, which is nothing 
but a bridle-path — we look for and find the snowy brow of 
Mount Hermon upon the horizon. 

"Which Hermon the Sidonians call Sirion, and the 
Amorites call it Shener," writes the author of Deuteronomy, 
parentheticall} 7 . 

At Shunem w T e pause to get a picture that we do not, 
for a moment, attempt to believe is the house of Elisha, and 
to arrange to our satisfaction in which of the no longer fertile fields the boy, now 
grown to be a lad, was 1 ' making believe ' ' help the reapers when the fierce sun 
struck the young head. 

" Did you ever think " — one muses aloud — " what a risk the poor mother ran 
in venturing out in the terrible midday heat that had killed her child ? And in 
excitement and haste that were in themselves dangerous?" 

There is no immediate response, but we know that the thoughts of all 
are with the solitary figure crouched together at the head of the flat, name- 
less grave in sight of the hill on which once stood Nain, and that each ponders 
upon the mother-love which is one and the same to-day with that which 




A FEIyEAHEEN SOWER. 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



H3 



oast the Shunainmite woman, bitter of soul and speechless, at the prophet's feet. 
Our luncheon- tent is pitched within the ancient bounds of Naboth's vineyard. 
The threatening rain-clouds, after a spiteful shower, have rolled by to mass them- 
selves beyond Hermon and the hill Mizar. The sun shines kindly upon a spot 
which no man in his senses would covet at this day. Earlier comers have pre- 
empted the ground about the well that may have been here and used to irrigate 
the vines when Ahab went down to survey the blood-bought plot, and met Elijah 




SYRIAN BREAD AND CAKE VENDERS. 



face to face. One of my pet abominations, a camel, an uncommonly ugly specimen 
at that, erects his head against the pale sky. His master, his master's wife and 
his master's child, and the family donkey are enjoying their "nooning." The 
human creatures stare stupidly at us; the donkey is stolidly indifferent to our 
vicinity; the camel is supercilious. Hardy grasses push their way between the 
stones of every form and size that cumber the soil, and rank weeds fringe a lazy 
pool where a woman sits upon her heels, alternately beating wet clothes against 
the rocks, and going through the form of rubbing them between her fists while she 
gazes over her shoulder at the ' 1 foreign animals ' ' feeding in their tent. 



144 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



The Plain of Esdraelon stretches beyond to the foot of the mountains; the 
gleam of standing water gives back the sunlight at a dozen different points; copses 
of scrub trees diversify the level growth. It is not a barren outlook; neither is it 
attractive. 

" A garden of herbs !" reads Alcides from " the best Baedeker for Palestine.' ' 
"That didn't mean parsley, summer-savory, thyme, sweet marjoram, or even 
rosemary-and-rue, I take it — hey, David ? 

"I have often reflected upon that, sir, and in my humble judgment, King 
Ahab had a fancy for ornamental flower-gardens — terraces and the like — that could 
'have been well contrived here. He was a spoiled child — was King Ahab — and 
his wife kept him spoiled — and a child — for reasons of her own. What are we to 
think of a man of years, and the king of a great nation, who takes to his bed and 
will not eat his dinner because he cannot get a bit of land he has set his heart 
upon ? There was something evil at work besides his own folly. And when the 
evil outside of a man is a woman !" 

He shakes the crumbs vigorously from the tablecloth at the tent door with 
the gesture of one aware of the impotency of speech. 

The vineyard was close under the walls of Ahab's palace or " house," as he 
called it in bargaining with Naboth. There is as little vestige of one as the other 
now. From out of the shelter of the tent, as we lie luxuriously upon our rugs, we 
gaze up at all that is left of Jezreel — a ruined watch-tower. From that height the 
watchman spied the armed company approaching and recognized the foremost as 
Jehu, the son of Nimshi, " for he driveth furiously." 

" The marginal reading has it ' in madness,' ' ' interpolates Alcides. ' ' Hark !" 

The thunder of racing hoofs is in the air; across the base of the hill rushes a 
drove of half-wild horses, bred upon the Plain of Esdraelon; leaping tall boulders 
and broad pools; tearing up the slope within pistol range of us, wheeling, as at a 
spoken order, and dashing off, until lost in the scrub. 

We laugh, consciously, before confessing that for an instant we had seen, as 
by a flash, the mad driving of the rude usurper, the intrepid old queen, her eyes 
defiant between the painted lids, the tiara upon her wrinkled forehead, looking 
from her high window to fling her last taunt, barbed with a threat, at the soldier 
of fortune in her court-yard. 

Alcides kicks at a cur who is nosing about in the grass for scraps, and shudders. 

' ' I don't fancy the breed — here /' ' 

The text he has in his mind is upon the open page before our eyes: 
" In the portion of Jezreel, shall dogs eat the flesh of Jezebel.' ' 



CHAPTER XV. 



GIDEON'S FOUNTAIN AND DOTHAN. 

K diverge from the regular route connecting Jezreel with Nablous, 
because Alcides has a strong desire, dating from his childish liking 
for " Gideon's band," to visit Gideon's Fountain. It is but a mile 
or so from our road. The rocks bound it on one side; on the other 
marsh lands stretch away into arid slopes which lose themselves in the barren 
bleakness of the mountains of Gilboa. Had David lived in this century, he would 
not have troubled himself to call down the curse of dewless and rainless seasons 
upon the naked sides and bald brows. 

The "Fountain" is a shallow pool, perhaps sixty feet square, having its 
source in the rocks and finding an outlet in the sluggish brook. Of course, every- 
body alights for a drink at the spot where we imagine Gideon may have tested the 
qualifications of his host for the expedition of the morrow, and equally of course, 
nobody gets down upon his knees upon the brink to put his lips to the water. 
Then the horses are ridden slowly across the fountain and back again to wash and 
cool their hoofs. 

" Dr. Sharpe does not believe that this is the pool of Gideon," remarks our 
guide, letting Dervish stand for a grateful minute up to the fetlocks in the gliding 
stream. "And Dr. Sharpe is a very learned man. However, we have always 
been told that it was here that the three hundred were chosen to march against 
the enemy encamped upon the Plain of Esdraelon. If the Captain" — a title 
newly bestowed by him upon Alcides — " will turn to Judges vi. 5, he will there 
read how they ' came up with their cattle and their tents, and they came as grass- 
hoppers for multitude; for both they and their camels were without number; and 
they entered the land to destroy it. ' No wonder Gideon was afraid to undertake 
the business of dispersing them. See verse fifteenth, if 3-ou please, sir — where he 
asks the Lord — ' Wherewith shall I save Israel? Behold my family is poor in 
Manasseh, and I am the least in my father's house.' At that very time he was 
threshing his wheat when it was hardly ripe, to keep it out of the hands of the 
Midianites. ' ' N 

The clouds return after the rain, this time in a stead}?- downpour, before we 
gain the shelter of the camp. It is pitched without the precinct of Jenin, a 
market-town for the surrounding country, situated near the southern point of the 

(146) 




THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



H7 



mighty oasis we have been traversing, and which, I may say here, becomes 
impassable during the January rains, to blossom with lily and rose and a riotous 
host of other wild flowers in March and April. Through the descending floods 
we made out the outlines of what looked like a barrack as we hurried into the 
tents. Before we have had time or means for drawing a dry breath we are advised 
that we are uncomfortably near an arm of law, if not of order, by the apparition 
of a couple of uniformed representatives. It is not easy to lay hand immediately 
upon the passports for which we have had no use since leaving Damascus, but it 
is presently apparent that they must be exhibited to the doughty officer who does 




the talking. He may be the embodiment of an armed constabulary of his city, 
or responsible to his government for all suspicious strangers found loitering under 
the walls of Jenin. He is peremptory enough to be a triune mayor, high sheriff 
and pasha, as he drips over John's cook stove, and rains Arabic gutturals upon the 
conductor of the obnoxious foreigners. 

It is the first moment of actual discomfort we have had in camp, for every- 
thing is wet that the rain could reach, and Syrian rain is a force to be remembered 
when once encountered. But a damp portmanteau is hastily overhauled, and 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



from the very bottom is dragged a long envelope, marked "Passports," armed 
with which Alcides dashes across the rainy area to present it, defiantly, to his 
Highmightiness. David intercepts it, unfolds it in the kitchen-tent and extends it 
in dumb dignity . The official motions to Imbarak to hold a candle at his shoulder, 
and proceeds to peruse the document from top to bottom. Seen from the tent- 
door opposite, the scene has striking features, and Rembrandtish effects of light 
and gloom. We have time to study them all before the official snatches the candle 
and throws the gleam full upon the face of Alcides, standing unguardedly near. 
" He has a beard !" dramatically. 

If he "does not add, "It is not so nominated iv die bond," it is because 
Shakespeare is an unknown quantity in the list of his learning and accomplish- 




" THE SPOT SELECTED BY OUR ATTENDANTS." 



ments. He insists upon what amounts to the same thing, and so doggedly that, 
for the only time upon record, our worthy dragoman for a season bids farewell to 
his temper, and absolutely talks his countryman into shamed silence. 

This is the first insult offered his travelers, and he means that it shall be the 
last, if he has to complain to the government in person of the stupidity of a man 
who pretends to serve it, and does not know that a gentleman has a right to shave 
his chin, or to let his beard grow, as pleases him, without asking permission of 
the Jenin police. No ! the gentleman will not go up to the town, or one step out 
of this tent, to have his passport "vised." The official knows, as well as the 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 149 

speaker, that the office where this should be done is locked up for the night. If 
he — the official — wants to pocket the contemptible ' ' beschlik ' ' (sixpence) it would 
cost to ' ' vise ' ' the ' ' tezkere ' ' (passport) , the speaker will pay it to him out of 
hand, and here, to end a matter that disgraces the honorable government under 
which both parties live. 

The conclusion of the whole matter is the ignominious retreat of the intruder, 
followed b}^ his subordinate, who has not uttered a sound throughout the affair, 
and the business of camp-life can go on in the customary manner. David's spirit is 
too deeply ruffled to subside at once and as we sink to slumber three hours there- 
after, we catch, between the dashes of rain upon the canvas roof, the murmur, not 
loud, but deep, of his rehearsal of the grievance to his lieutenants, as they smoke 
together in the kitchen-tent. 

Camp is broken next morning, and the cavalcade sets forward under a sky as 
softly blue as ever bowed over Italy. Our first halt is at "Joseph's Well." 

" What we believe is the 
pit into which his brethren put 
him," is our introduction to 
the walled quadrangle and old 
stone building toward which 
the horses turn of their own 
accord. 

' ■ But we surely passed such 
a pit four days ago ?" . 

1 ( The Mohammedans are 
responsible for that blunder, sir. 
They claim that Joseph was let 
down into that well. Whereas, 
as ever}- reader of the Old Testa- 
ment knows, we learn in the 
thirty-seventh chapter of Gene- 
sis, the seventeenth verse, that 
Joseph's brethren were in Dothan. This is Dothan." 

As to the last statement, there is no question. We exchange incredulous 
glances as, after having left the horses with Serkeese, severely enjoining him to 
keep his wits and all the bridles well in hand, we enter a gap in the low stone wall 
and perceive that the building it surrounds is a mill, erected above a square well. 
A water-wheel turns creakingly within this, constructed after a primitive pattern, 
jars being bound to the broad rim, going down empty and coming up full. The 
place is very dark until our eyes become accustomed to the change from the outer 
day; we walk up to the " pit," and look down into it. 




A GROUP OUTSIDE THE MILE. 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



" 1 And the pit was empty; there was no water in it !' Is it ever dry now?" 

The miller holds up his hand in deprecation. What would then become of 
his business ? And the visitors can see for themselves how many bring hither 
corn to be ground. 

They are sitting about on stones outside, genuine children of Ishmael, albeit 
lounging against 
the wall precisely 
as Yankee and 
Western loungers 
haunt grist-mill or 
"store." 

"The sight 
makes one quite 
homesick !" de- 
clares Alcides, pen- 
sively. "All they 
lack to complete the 
picture is the na- 
tional jack-knife 
and shingle. ' ' 

The one excep- 
tion to what passes 
with the saturnine 
race for sociabil- 
ity is a solitary 
wrapped in his 
abieh and with- 
drawn to a corner of 
the mill-yard. Be- 
side him on the wall 
are the trappings of 
ahorseorrnule. He 
regards us gloomily 
from the shadows 
of his kafeyeh. In 

the kodak-book he is registered as a "Study of Reuben." — Geu.xxxvii.29-30. 

Try as we will, we cannot take Joseph's Pit seriousry. There are too many 
of them. There is one in Egypt, the peculiar property of the Copts. 

The place has other associations of which we speak softly to one another, after 
we have lunched, and David and Serkeese are breaking their fast in the shadow 




RUSSIAN PEASANT WOMEN AT WORK IN THE FIELD. 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



of the old walls. The country is fertile and beautiful with olive orchards. The 
wet trees glisten in the morning light, as from a bath of silver, and now, as far as 
the eye can reach, clothe the plain, and round off the heights. Hermon shows 
faint but fair, in the remote distance, already a beloved landmark for which we 
look upon rising each hill. Peasants are plowing the brown fields with patient 
oxen, flocks of crows — gray instead of black — hopping and foraging in the shallow 
furrows. 

In these meadows the sons of Jacob fed their flock, and compared notes con- 
cerning the little brother who was taking unwarrantable airs upon himself. We 
picture them herding morosely together at sight of the slender figure crossing the 
plain, appearing and reappearing under the low olive boughs. They would know 
him, when yet a long way off, by the many-colored coat. Did he fling it back as 
he ran, as the fellaheen whose salute we return as he goes by to the mill-yard, lets 
his brown-and- white abieh slip from one shoulder ? 

The boy had told tales out of school to their old father of the misdoings of 
his half-brothers, but his dreams were a more grievous offence in their sight. If — 
our mood more confiding with our talk — they did, indeed, cast him into the (then 
dry) pit behind us, they must have awaited his approach about where we were 
sitting upon the sun-warmed rocks, and in sight of the old caravan road from 
Gilead to Egypt. They were eating their luncheon (maybe nigh unto the spot 
selected by our attendants to-day, — who knows?) when they espied the dark line 
of Ishmaelites with their camels, bearing spicery and balm and myrrh, going to 
carry it to the richest land in the known world. 

The Dothan — compassed at night by a host, both with horses and chariots, 
sent to take the prophet who told the King of Israel the words spoken by the 
King of Syria in his bed-chamber — has disappeared from the face of the earth 
with lesser and greater cities of the Holy Eand. We do not know which of the 
picturesque hills bounding our view was the " mountain full of horses and chariots 
of fire round about Elisha," made visible to the eyes of the terrified servant in 
answer to his master's prayer. But the way by which the blinded Syrian troops 
were led by Elisha to Samaria must be nearly, if not quite, the route we are to 
take this afternoon. 



CHAPTER XVI. 



"THE BURDEN OF SAMARIA." 

HND, I will make Samaria as an heap of the field, and as plantings of 
a vineyard; and I will pour down the stones thereof into the valley, 
and I will discover the foundations thereof." 
We are climbing the hill that has stood from age to age, in ghastly 
fulfilment of a prophecy pronounced against the haughty rival of Jerusalem, two 
thousand six hundred years ago. The turns of the road are made by buried 
ruins ; here and there a carved fragment has been washed bare, the corner of a 
stone sarcophagus projects. The thoroughfare is ancient, and probably the same 
by which the four leprous men stole down in the twilight from the gate of the 
besieged city into the camp of the Syrians, in the desperation of famine : 

" If they save us alive, we shall live ; and if they kill us, we shall but die." 
The route is as solitary and silent now as when the night hid from the tremb- 
ling outcasts the deserted tents and ways of what they had expected to find teem- 
ing with life. Of the old Samaria, nothing is left but heaps upon heaps, and, 
bordering the neglected road upon a plateau more than half-way up the mountain, 
a line of truncated granite columns, the remains, say some, of the market-place, 
or forum, of Omri's city. 

"If you please, Captain, you will find that in First Kings, the sixteenth 
chapter, twenty-fourth verse," interjects a respectful voice from the head of the 
little cavalcade. The Bible cushion in these wayside lectures is the pommel of 
the saddle generously pressed upon Alcides by the beloved physician in Beirut as 
infinitely more comfortable than the ordinary Arabian. From the peripatetic desk 
we hear the first record made of the celebrated town. 

"And he bought the hill Samaria of Shemer for two talents of silver, and 
built on the hill, and called the name of the city, which he built, after the name of 
Shemer, owner of the hill, ' Samaria,' " or, as the margin has it, "Shomoron," or, 
" Watchfort." 

An orchard of olive-trees backs the ruined pillars, and a little further on the 
road ends in the modern village of Samaria. 

We have only time to see that it like a majority of other Syrian hamlets — 
less thrifty than Nazareth, and not so large and cleaner than Jenin, when our 
guide rides back from the front to the spot where we have paused for a view of 

(152) 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



x 53 



the landscape, and the shining ribbon of the Mediterranean bounding it upon our 
right. 

" If you please, here is something you will like to see, — the boys of Samaria 
at the very games, I doubt not, which the holy men of old, when children, played 
in Israel and Samaria, and in like manner." 

We hasten into an open space, — the village common, it may be called — peopled, 
at this instant, with a wild rabble of youngsters, scratching, biting, kicking and 




"CARRYING THE MONEY WITH THEM." 



swearing (there is no mistaking the tone of profanity, however strange the tongue)> 
like a pack of quarrelsome hounds. 

Jeremiah would have laughed with us, at the unexpected climax and the 
added stimulus of the grieved chagrin eloquent in the honest bronzed visage of 
the showman at our shout of ' ' Holy men of old ! Oh, David ! ' ' 

' ' And they were so peaceful and friendly not three minutes ago, I do assure 
you ! ' ' 

They are neither friendly nor reasonable now, for when they can be persuaded 
to stop fighting one another, they despise the admonition to ''go on playing," and 
after basely accepting a bribe, get into position by driving a stick into the ground- 



154 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



then, catching sight of the kodak, raise a shriek of " sorcerer ! " and pelt up the 
hill, carrying the money with them. 

Our respect for the Crusaders deepens with each visit to such memorials of their 
occupancy of the Sacred Soil as the ruins of magnificent bridges, strong fortresses 
and noble churches which the wanton Saracen and pitiless Time have not succeeded 
in effacing utterly. The impression is too general, even among educated Christ- 
ians, that the impetuous zeal to rescue the Holy Sepulchre from the hands of the 
infidel expended itself in a great measure in spasmodic fury such as was displayed 
by the bereaved bridegroom who — 

Threw his life away, fighting with the Turk. 

Treasure and taste were lavished, no less than the best blood of Christendom, 
in the effort to establish the true faith in the land that had given the Founder of 
Faith to the whole world, and it is not in human nature not to grow bitter, some- 
times, at thought and sight of the desecration that has succeeded a sublime, if ill- 
judged, enterprise. 

A fondly-cherished family tradition has to do with a renowned champion of 
the Cross, who fought every inch of his way from Jaffa to Jerusalem, and left his 
bones in the dust of Mount Zion. We have never acknowledged the kinship more 
fulh T than in the indignant leap of our pulses at an incident of our visit to the 
Church of St. John the Baptist, the one object of interest in modern Samaria. 
The walls have withstood the action of almost nine centuries, " Crusader's work " 
being the synonym for stability from corner to cap-stone. Hammer and trowel 
are busy upon the interior as we cross the marble threshold. The whole church 
is gutted, and is undergoing alteration into a Mohammedan mosque. Portions of 
it have been thus used for a hundred years. Under the hands now engaged here, 
the last vestige of Christian architecture will, in a few years, be obliterated. 
Holding, as we do, as a rule of good breeding, the obligation to bear ourselves 
decorously in whatever place of worship we may visit, we have made the round 
of the place quietly, and are on our way to the entrance, when a man who seems 
to be the superintendent of the workmen steps up in front of us and addresses us 
in Arabic, to which David replies. 

We are evidently the objects of remark in the ensuing dialogue in which the 
stranger presses some point, and Jamal as resolutely, although more temperately, 
refuses. 

' What does he wish to have you tell us ? ' ' we demand, having made out this 
much of the tenor of the altercation. 

' ' Nothing worth my telling — or you knowing, ' ' is the answer. 1 1 It is better 
I should not say it. He has no right to speak it to me, much less to ask me to 

say it in your ears." 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



1 55 



The excitement of the Moslem rises dangerously fast, and we, too, make a 
stand. ' ' What have we done ? ' ' 

" Nothing whatever," the interpreter hastens to convince us. " If you will 
pardon me for carrying such words to your ears, he will have it that I tell you 
that the faithful (as he will call them) have, at last, broken down and cast down 
the signs of idolatrous religion that were once in this church, and that the like 
should be done everywhere, as he hopes and he believes it will be before long. 




"THE DREARY UNE OF NAMELESS COLUMNS." 



That is all ; and now, if you please, we will thank the gentleman for his hospitality 
and leave him. ' ' 

We take this advice, without trespassing further upon Moslem courtesy by 
asking to see the reputed tomb of John the Baptist in the crypt. 

" It is by no means probable that he was buried here," we are informed. ' ' It 
is believed that John was beheaded at Herod's castle at Machias beyond the Jordan, 
and as the Captain will see in St. Matthew xiv. 12, and likewise in St. Mark 
vi. 29, his disciples got possession of his body and buried it. St. Mark says, 'laid 



156 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



it in the tomb/ Then ' they went and told Jesus.' They would hardly bring 
him to Samaria. There was a splendid temple here then, built by Herod, I have 
heard, and dedicated to the Emperor Augustus Caesar. ' ' 

He pauses to speak to a woman sitting upon the ground, an earthenware bowl 
of dough between her knees, in the door of a stone building plastered with mud. 
She replies to his kind tone, testily, without looking at him, and draws her veil 
over the lower part of her face. We know the place for a public oven, having seen 
such elsewhere, and having, also, witnessed the friendly favor gained by our drag- 
oman with all sorts and conditions of people, are amazed that this acquaintance 
should snub him decidedly. He shakes his head sorrowfully in walking away. 

" That woman's husband was sick last year, and I was kind to him, and to- 
day it is she who has told the bo3 7 s that we are sorcerers, on account of the kodak, 
and she says she is herself afraid of it. Sorcery ! and in the nineteenth century." 

Apparently, it is the Christians with whom the Samaritans, now-a-days, will 
have no dealings. 

Beyond the drear} T line of nameless columns lining the ancient market-place 
and the 'olive orchard, amid a thicket of low trees — known by Christian peas- 
ants as the " Christ- thorn," because of the legend that from a branch of this the 
thorny crown was plaited — and a tangle of furzy growth, gathered when dry for 
fuel by the poorest women, — is the alleged site of the "ivory palace of Ahab's 
queen. ' ' 

Almost a centu^ after the memory of the wicked sovereign and his wickeder 
consort had rotted from the mind of the nation they had misruled, the herdsman 
3f Tekoa saw in a vision the fain-like structure that was the coronet of mighty 
Samaria, and prophesied concerning it : 

' ' And I will smite the winter house ^\ h the summer house ; and the houses 
of ivory shall perish, and the great houses . 'all have an end, saith the Lord." 

Lizards, green and black, slip in and ou of the jungle, scampering faster as 
the branches are stirred by a lean, starved-looking donkey, who pokes his head 
between two thorn-bushes to look at us. We have seen no drearier spot, unless it 
were the heap of stones passed soon after leaving Damascus, a cairn covering the 
reputed grave of Nimrod. 

No one who has read the weird lines could refrain from reciting aloud here : 

They say the Lion and Lizard keep 
The courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep : 
And Bahram, that great Hunter, the wild Ass, 
Stamps o'er his head, but cannot break his sleep. 

The prickly furze — for which we know no other name — is at the driest now , 
and Bedouin women, from the encampment of booths we see in a hollow of the 
great hill down there, are cutting it with bill-hooks, binding it into immense 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



I 57 



bundles and bearing it home upon their heads. It is light, although so bulky ; yet 
we watch them with wonder, stepping fleetly over stones and stubble, straight and 
strong, apparently careless of the loads. 

In the direction toward which our faces are turned a panorama of fertile loveli- 
ness unfolds itself to the delight of eyes wearied by sterile terraces and jutting 




"THEY FAI,!, INTO LINE." 



crags. Slopes are greening under a day of blandest sunshine ; in sheltered 
crevices, flowers — pink, white and yellow — are beginning to bloom, and in the 
gentle descent into the Valley of Shechem, the silver- green groves are vocal with 
the laughter and prattle of children who are gathering purple olives from laden 
boughs. They fall into line and return cur salute as we pass. 
" The labor of the olive has not ceased," says one. 



158 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



Yet, in the mournful recollection of the matted jungle overgrowing the fallen 
Stones of the royal palace, another wondrous prophecy is read aloud before the 
" guide-book " is returned to the saddle-pocket : 

" And it shall come to pass in that day that every place shall be, where there 
were a thousand vines and a thousand silverlings, it shall be even for briars and 
thorns ; 

£ 1 With arrows and with bows shall men come hither ; because all the land 
shall become briars and thorns." 

This is Isaiah's cry against " the head of Ephraim, which is Samaria." 

And " For all this, His anger is not turned away, but His hand is stretched 
out still." 




sm 




(159) 



CHAPTER XVII.* 



JACOB'S WELL AND JOSEPH'S TOMB. 

URSUING our way from Nablous (the ancient Shechem) in the cold 
winter morning, we are spared the sight of the lepers who sit daily 
at the wayside, begging, when the weather is moderate. Cold is 
peculiarly painful to these unfortunates, and until it abates, they lie 
as nearly torpid as their condition will allow, in whatever shelter they can find. 
We see but four to-day. In the immediate outskirts of the town, one, better 
dressed than a majority of his class, his face muffled from the sharp air so that but 
©ne eye is visible, and with his maimed hands behind him, shivers against a sunny 
wall, and another is huddled in a neighboring doorway. When we leave the 
streets behind us we pass two more; one squatted on the stones, his companion 
lying upon his stomach, supported by his elbows. 

All stare vacantly at us, too demoralized by the fall of temperature to unclose 
their lips, even to utter " bakshish." If an}' men and women upon this beautiful 
earth have a valid excuse for beggary, it is the lepers of the country towns. Cut 
off from such branches of industry as require people to labor in companies, 
debarred by mutilated members and stiffened joints from tilling the fields, their 
only resort from starvation is to cry aloud and spare not to entreat the charity of 
all who pass by. If the day were mild, both sides of the road would be lined 
with them, and the strange, husky call we learned, long ago, to recognize above 
the clamor of crowded thoroughfares — " Bakshish ! howadji ! Abras ! Abras ! 
bakshish!" (Give money, gentlemen! we are lepers! lepers! Oh! give 
money !") — would deafen the ear and sicken the heart. Whatever may be our 
views on the subject of mendicancy and the evils of indiscriminate alms-giving, 
we cannot refrain from throwing some coins to them in hurrying by, and* looking 
back, see them stoop slowly and painfully to pick them up. 

This is the sharpest morning we have felt. John, of the numerous appella- 
tions, and Imbarak, the tall, following the mules laden with tents and camp- 
furniture, are bundled up in all manner of extemporized shawls and scarfs; the 
jaunty waiter, erect as a ramrod in the discharge of official duties, is bowed and 
shrunken as a gladiolus- stalk under a nipping frost, and glances piteously at us in 
response to our cheery " good-bye." 

( 160 




THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



161 



The weather that shrivels up these children of the sun has cleared the atmos- 
phere from horizon to horizon. The valley of Shechem is wondrously beautiful 
in the pure light. But we miss Hermon, gleaming as with newly-fallen snows, 
and the purple peak of Safed, the highest point of Galilee, so often visible to us 
for the past two days. 

" To which, it is said, Christ our Eord pointed when he said, ' A city set on a 
hill cannot be hid !' " is our guide's comment upon the storied height. 

Every foot of ground 
is connected with the 
sacred Classics. For 
while Nablous means 
nothing to us, our eyes, 
ears and hearts are opened 
when we recollect that 
the modern town is the 
ancient Shechem. Mount 
Ebal, on our left, and 
Gerizim, on the right, are 
the Mounts of Cursing 
and of Blessing. 

' ' If the Captain will 
kindly turn to Joshua, 
the eighth chapter, thirty- 
third and thirty-fourth 
verses, ' ' suggests our ani- 
mate Concordance. In 
the still, dry air, the 
words have a peculiar 
ring that helps us to be- 
lieve what learned com- 
mentators upon the re- 
markable narrative aver, namely, that the responses chanted by that half of the 
Israelites stationed upon Mount Ebal could be heard across the narrow valley 
upon the summit of Mount Gerizim: 

And all Israel and their elders, and officers, and their judges, stood on this side the ark and 
on that side before the priests the Levites, which bare the ark of the covenant of the L,ord, as 
well the stranger as he that was born among them: half of them over, against Mount Gerizim, 
and half of them over against Mount Ebal, as Moses the servant of the Lord had commanded 
before, that they should bless the people of Israel. 

And afterward he read all the words of the law, the blessings and cursings according to all 
that is written in the book of the law. 




THE EGYPTIAN WEI,!,. 



162 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



" What a magnificent responsive service !" observes one, as the " best Baede- 
ker for Palestine;" is closed. 

Not put away, for Shechem of old figures often and prominently upon the 
inspired pages; the mention of the name draws about it a host of striking pictures. 
In Mrs. Whitney's one book of foreign travels, "Sights and Insights," she puts 
into the mouth of Emory Ann, a shrewd New England spinster, a saying we bor- 
row often, and at last appropriate unscrupulously. She describes herself as 
" realizing her geography." We are " realizing our Bible." 




THESSALONICA, NOW KNOWN AS SAIyONICA, IN ROUMELIA. 



The little village whitening in the sunshine and nestling at the base of Geri- 
zim marks the place where the Father of the Faithful built the first altar raised 
to the One True and Only God in the land then held by the Canaanites. They 
call it now, " The Holy Oak," in memory of the tree under which Jacob buried 
the ' ' strange gods that were in their hands, and all their earrings that were in 
their ears," and where Joshua set up the great memorial stone of the s " statute 
and ordinance ' ' made in Shechem . 

Nearer to us, and toward this holy site, we turn our steps in mute reverence. 
For this is " the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph, the parcel of 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



a field where he had spread his tent, which he bought of the children of Hamor, 
Shechem's father, for an hundred pieces of money." We turn from Genesis to 
John's Gospel. 

Now Jacob's well was there. Jesus, therefore, being wearied with His journey, sat thus on 
the well ; and it was about the sixth hour. 

The ' ' sixth hour ' ' would be high noon, and there had been a fatiguing walk 
over the hills. As He "sat thus" (wearily), upon the curb of the well, He 




the; road to samaria. 

needed the meat which his disciples had gone into the city to buy, no less than 
water and rest. 

A rough, broken stone wall surrounds the well. The archway is closed half 
the way up by a door. This is locked, and there is no care-taker near to admit us. 
j Selecting the lowest breach in the wall, we clamber over fallen masonry to the 
| top and over it to the inside. A church stood here once, probably erected by those 
J valiant and indefatigable church-builders, the Crusaders; but altar, columns and 
| architrave were swept away centuries ago, and the mosaic pavement buried many 



164 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



feet deep under the rubbish we see. A feeble effort at exploration for what we 
know must underlie the ruins was made recently, and laid bare the steps. A short 
flight leads down to the landing; beyond the landing is another locked door. We 
-shake it energetically and uselessly. The priest who acts as custodian is absent, 
•and the key is with hiim On the other side of the door is the mouth of the well, 
snore than seventy feet deep. 

" It was, we are told, over an hundred feet in depth in former times," David 
relates, seated on the upper step. ' ' The custom of visitors of throwing stones to 




JOSEPH'S TOMB. 



the bottom to hear them fall into the water has helped fill it up. There used 
to be a flat stone on top, with a round hole in the middle, through which pig-skin 
buckets were let down by long ropes. I'm thinking that a few thousand dollars 
would be well spent in clearing away all this rubbish, and show what the well was 
on that da3 r ." 

The sigh is continually in the mouth of the visitor who bears in memory that 
the deposit of ages has arisen many feet above the surface upon which our Master 
walked. We make our way up to the present level; lay our Guide-book upon 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



165 



the wall, and re-read the beautiful story of the interview with the woman of 
Samaria. 

" It is called Askar, now," we learn, ''and lies just there "—a finger is 
pointed toward Mount Ebal — " a little distance awa}^" 

It was an insignificant town then, and she who came carelessly along the 
path winding around the hill was not a good woman, an ornament to the place. 
So loose had been her life, and so bold 
must have been the glance she dropped 
upon the Galilean peasant, sitting with lax 
limbs and drooping head — maybe upon the 
massive steps we have just left — that the 
impulse of a man who consulted self-respect 
rather than the opportunity to lift the fallen, 
would have been to feign ignorance of her 
presence. 

We have never appreciated until at this 
reading the effrontery of her rejoinder to the 
request common to the lips of every way- 
worn man, halting at a well, from the days of 
Eleazar of Damascus down to this, our day — 
:< Give me to drink." She might be noto- 
riously profligate, getting rid of, or being 
cast off, by one after another of five hus- 
bands, and at length braving public opinion 
and risking a shameful death by living with 
one who was not her husband; but she had 
not sunk so low as to give a draught of cold 
water to a Jew. She was a Samaritan, 
through and through. Even when her in- 
solence was quelled by the majesty of the Stranger's presence and speech, she 
vaunted herself upon her great ancestor, Jacob, and the patriarch fathers who 
worshiped in 4 ' this mountain." 

"That would be Gerizim," we check the narrative to say, looking up with 
awe to the summit on which may be traced the ruins of an ancient synagogue. 
However changed other features of the scene may be, the hills are the same, and 
it is certain upon what His eyes rested as He spoke of " this mountain." 

We have sent the horses on to wait for us at the Tomb of Joseph, and 
walk the quarter-mile separating us from Jacob's Well. The low-domed mosque 
beside the last resting-place of the patriarch glares whitely against the back 
ground of mountains. The tomb itself is in the enclosure without the mosque, 




THK GIRI, WE MKT AT BANIAS." 



the: flag of the orient. 



167 



and olive trees grow so near as to shade it when the sunbeams slant from 
the west. 

"For over sixty years his mummy must have traveled with the tribes;" 
Alcides has been making a rough computation upon the fly-leaf of his note- 
book, based upon the chronological headings of certain pages in the " Palestine 

Baedeker." "And he 
had lain in a coffin 
in Egypt four hundred 
years. Not such a long 
time compared with 
the two or three-thou- 
sand-year-old mum- 
mies one makes free 
with in museums; yet 
one cannot but feel 
that it must have been 
a comfort when Joshua 
at last bu r i e d his 
bones quietly (and for 
all time, let us hope) 
in this parcel of 
ground. ' ' 

It is a goodly 
resting-place, guarded 
by the everlasting 
hills, upon one of 
which Eleazar and 
Phineas, the son and 
grandson of Aaron, 
were interred. 

The defile be- 
tween the Mounts of 

"A JOSEPH OF TO-DAY." tvi • J c 

J Blessing and of Curs- 

ing, scarcely more than half a mile wide in the narrowest part, widens into what 
is styled the " Wandering Field of Joseph." Again — (and I am ashamed to con- 
fess for what number of times we might set it down) — we discover that our pre- 
conceived idea of time and distance in a familiar Bible story is utterly at fault. 
If catechised we should have said that Joseph's search lasted throughout, per- 
haps, one day, and that the ground covered by the " wandering in the field " was 
measured by acres, not miles. It absolutely startles us to discover that the 




168 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



seventeen-year-old lad had traveled over forty miles — measured by an air-line — 
after leaving his father at Hebron, before he met " a certain man " at Shechem, 
who had heard Jacob's elder sons say, " Let us go to Dothan." Dothan, itself, 
is fifty miles from Jacob's home in Hebron. 

One is moved to compassion and admiration at the thought of the anxious 
hours and tedious days consumed in the errand, and the steadfastness that held 
the messenger to it. 

"Yet," we remind one another, "the boy was used to such expeditions. 
Do you recollect the Bedouin girl we met at Banias, who had been looking for her 
father's camels for two days, and had not found them when we saw her ? She had 
slept at night in the tents of her people, as she chanced to come up with them. 
Joseph no doubt did the same, or laid him down to rest, as darkness fell upon 
the grass. That his brethren were in the fields with their flocks shows that the 
season was not winter. ' ' 

A shepherd-boy appears in the defile terminating in the " Wandering Field," 
swinging himself along with the springing tread of the mountain-bred native. His 
tunic is dark blue cloth, the upper garment of sheep-skin made up with the wool 
inside; a scarf of many colors is twisted about his waist, and a gay " kaej^eh " is 
bound over his head with a black "ikal," or cord of camel's hair. In the 
momentary pause caused by the sudden sight of the approaching cavalcade, the 
kodak has caught him as a " Joseph of to-day, ' ' 







(169) 



CHAPTER XVIII. 



THE SONS OF ISHMAEL. 

GHE black tents clustered, in winter, in sheltered hollows of the hills 
have been, from the date of our entrance into the Holy Land, objects 
of peculiar interest to us. Like those of Kedar, they are comely in 
our observant eyes. Once and again, we have alighted at a small 
encampment, and sat for an hour in the tent of the sheikh, accepted coffee, and 
declined pipes and cigarettes upon one or another civil pretext, and talked (at 
second-hand) with the inmates of the temporary home. More frequently we have 
ridden near enough to witness the hospitable stir created by our approach, 
exchanged friendly salutations and passed on, for a twenty-minute or half- hour 
call is an impossibility without giving deep offence to the astonished host. 

We are now to pay our first regular visit to a Bedouin sheikh, whose village 
Hes within three miles of the table-land where we pitched our camp last night, and 
directly in line with our projected route for to-day. 

The potentate, in passing our door at sunset, had alighted to proffer in person 
a courteous request that we would honor his poor abode by a call at whatever 
hour it might please us to do so. All that he has, and whatever he can do, is, 
according to his showing, at our service, now and forever. His grave dignity and 
graceful deference of tone precluded ungrateful doubts of his sincerity. 

Without emulating his deportment, we accepted the invitation, leaving our 
major-domo, as master of ceremonies, to clothe the acquiescence in terms suffi- 
ciently high-flown to satisfy himself and our would-be entertainer. Jamal came 
to the dining-tent when dinner was over, to post us up as to the sheikh's rank and 
importance. He is one of the richest and most powerful Bedouins on this side 
of the Jordan, with a following of over five hundred families. His flocks of 
sheep, his herds of goats and larger cattle are immense, and his horses are the 
finest for many miles around. 

" He has but two wives," is a part of the story, " He is only forty }'ears 
of age, and may, of course, add to the number. Yet that is not likely. He is a 
sensible man." 

Having witnessed the parting between the proprietor of our camp and the 
mighty sheikh, we quite comprehended the compliment of the call, and the 
friendliness of the pair. 

(170) 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



171 



We talk Bedouin until our early bed-time, comparing impressions and infor- 
mation with regard to the strange nomads. The two hours' discussion is thus 
hoiled down in Alcides' note-book: 

Their object in living seems to be to rob other tribes, and to fight the injured 
parties afterward; to hunt, to ride, marry, and to wander from one chosen place to 
another. Their ostensible business is agriculture and stock-raising. 

" Leading characteristics: Politeness and hospitality to guests; revenge and 
ill-doing to enemies, and a large and level eye to the main chance, especially in 
the matter of robbery and horse-trades. 




"having witnessed the parting." 



1 ' In morals of other kinds, their methods are summary. If a man suspects 
his wife of undue liking for another man, he invites her to accompany him upon a 
hunting expedition, or a pleasure ride, and comes back without her. She is never 
seen or named again, and the murderer is honored for the deed. If a girl gets 
1 talked about,' there is no investigation of proofs. Her father or brother takes 
her off out of sight of the camp, and shoots her as he would a dog suspected of 
hydrophobia. Half-way measures are unpopular among this simple-minded 
people. " 



172 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



At breakfast, the theme is still the sons of Ishmael and the visit we are to 
make. Imbarak, dwarfing the tent, as usnal, waits without, tea-pot in hand, five 
minutes before his presence is perceived. He is too decorous to "hem," or 
shuffle, to call attention to the unimportant circumstance of his existence. And 
this morning, alas! he casts no shadow. He never casts much, as to width, but 
the sun which arose red and sullen has, as the old saying is, " gone to bed again, '* 
under an uncompromising gray curtain. 

The curtain lets down more closely, on our side of the nearer hills, by the 
time we are on the march, as we reach the one irregular street defined by the 




TEA AT OUR OWN TENT DOOR. 



low, black tents, preliminary drops have lengthened into business-like streams. 
It rains, and rains straight. 

' ' They were meaning to remove the encampment to-morrow, up to the hills, " 
David says. ' ' As you will see, the rains have made this flat, low situation quite 
muddy." 

There are perhaps one hundred tents, all low, and some long, covered with a 
coarse fabric, woven of mingled goat's and camel's hair. Oddly enough, 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



i73 



although smoke is rising everywhere through this stuff as through mosquito-net- 
ting, it is practically water-proof. On the rainward side curtains are fastened to 
the ground. As the day is not cold, only wet, the other sides and ends of the 
tents are open. The settlement is sparse in the suburbs, and diversified by trees 
and bushes. As we go on, the tents are nearer together, almost touching one 
another. They vary from ten to forty feet in length, and from ten to fifteen in 
•depth; the sides are five feet high at the lowest, and about eight from the earth to 
the ridge-pole running from end to end. The largest is, as a matter of course, 
the sheikh's, and is further designated by a spear stuck in the ground. 

Before we halt, half-a-dozen men rush out, ready to seize the bridles of the 
horses and assist us in alighting. As each takes a visitor's hand to help him 
down, he tries to kiss it, with a gesture of profound humility. Alcides, whom 
David coaches upon nice points of Syrian etiquette, dexterously evades this cere- 
mony by withdrawing his hand and touching the back of it to his own lips. A 
woman and a foreigner permits the salute, bowing and smiling appreciation of the 
compliment paid to her. We are escorted into the largest compartment of the 
tent, the reception, or guest-room. There are three divisions, that in which we 
are received, and one apiece for each wife and her children. In the middle of the 
earthen floor smoulders a fire of coals, and in the hot ashes are set three brass 
coffee-pots, the tops attached to them by slender chains. 

The sheikh rises from a low stool at the left of the fire, and advances to wel- 
come us, raising his hand first to his forehead, then to his heart. Behind him i£ 
a row of men, cross-legged upon rush matting unrolled from one end of the tent 
to another. All bow and touch their foreheads without rising. At the right of 
the fire, servants spread a crimson rug, thick and soft, then place in the centre 
of it a camel's saddle and housings, richly embroidered. Upon this, as the seat 
of honor, we are invited to place ourselves. Little is said while all this goes 
on, gestures, much salaaming and a few sedate Arabic gutturals doing the work 
of making us at home and comfortable. When we are seated, the attendants 
back to the rear wall of the tent, and stand, alert, but motionless, behind the 
line of sitting figures. These, we are now aware, are fellow-guests with our- 
selves, invited to do us honor. Almost simultaneously, we find out that we have 
been invited to breakfast. There are as many breakfasts per day in a Bedouin's 
lodge as there are relays of guests in the forenoon. If these arrive hourly, each 
hour a fresh breakfast is cooked and served. One of the true tales to which we 
hearkened overnight was of a Bedouin, who, pursued by those who sought his 
life, fled to the chief of the hostile tribe for refuge. The sheikh received and 
sheltered him, and asked what the fugitive would like to have for dinner. 

" That," said the other, "I am content to leave to your generosity." 

The sheikh left the tent for a few minutes, returning presently, and resuming 



174 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



his seat in tranquil gravity. After a while, the guest, growing uneasy at the 
bleating and bellowing going on without, sallied forth to see eighteen sheep and 
half-a-dozen calves lying bleeding on the grass, and the work of slaughter still 
going on. But for his interposition and vehement protests, all the live stock in 
the encampment would have been sacrificed upon the altar of hospitality. 

The bill-of-fare on the present occasion was settled before our arrival. The 
table is set by depositing upon the floor a huge bowl of stout earthenware, filled 
with a smoking mess of broth, thickened with lentils until it would almost stand 
alone. About the basin is arranged upon the matting a circle of round, flat cakes 
of unleavened bread, hot from the oven or griddle on which they were baked. 
The central dish is flanked by a smaller of honey and one of loppered goat's, 
milk, or lebben, the same delicacy offered by Jael to Sisera in a "lordly dish,'" 




MOUNT OLYMPUS, FROM THE) PLAINS OF THFSSAI/Y. 



probably no better as to quality than the brown ware in which the national article 
of diet is placed before us. As many guests as can conveniently gather about the 
' ' dishes ' ' are collected by the host. They double their legs under them with the 
ease acquired by long practice, and each tearing off a fragment of the tough, warm 
cake, folds it with thumb and forefinger, plunges it into the reeking mess, and 
carries his spoil to his mouth. Portions of lebben and honey are partaken of 
between times. 

Our guide, always considerate of our well-being, assures us, in a guarded 
undertone, that we need not eat unless we desire it. He will represent the late 
and hearty breakfast we have had, and make all right. Alcides politely waives the 
apology, takes a distinguished place in the ring and tears off one ' ' spoon " after 
another from his round of bread, as to the manor born. It is excruciatingly 
funny to behold when one's stomach has nothing at stake in the exhibition, and 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



175 



the trifling accident of a brown thumb withdrawn, dripping, from the trencher, 
and carried with the bread-ladle to bearded lips, signifies less than if the next dip 
and sop were to feed the beholder's inner man — or woman. 

Coffee-making goes on all the time. The raw berries are roasted upon an 
iron plate shaken by a long handle over the enlivened coals; then they are turned 
into a mortar made of oak from Bashan and of a rich brown with age and use, 
and pounded with a pestle by a servant. As he pounds and grinds, he beats a 
sort of tune upon the resonant sides of the mortar, monotonous and not unmusi- 
cal. Lastly, the coffee powder is put into one of the brass kettles, simmering on 

r ~ r™ ~ ~ : ~ ~ t7 t~ n 



v 




SCENK IN A PERSIAN CARAVANSARY. 



the fire, and boiled up three times, before it is poured into small cups, without 
handles, and passed to the guests. I taste it, and even drink half of the contents 
of the cup although it is thick, unsweetened, and made absolutely odious to the 
uninitiated by a liberal pinch of allspice. The exhilarating draught is dispensed 
five times during the two hours of our stay within the hospitable precincts. 
Cooking is carried on as industriously in the adjoining compartment, to a subdued, 
accompaniment of women's and children's voices. In the presence of so many 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



men, the wiveb and women-servants are not allowed to show themselves. In view 
of the prejudice — or principle — enjoining the seclusion, we cannot admire too 
heartily the perfection of breeding that extends to the pale-faced stranger of the 
•inferior sex attention as marked as that received by her escorts. Not a glance, 
much less a word, testifies to surprise at her uncovered face and assumption of 
equality with the men surrounding her. Furthermore, not a question is asked as 
to the antecedents or intentions or destination of the foreigners. The talk runs 
(or walks) on the weather, the crops and horses, and is led by the sheikh, who 
eats apart from the rest, as a token of humility. He is not worthy, he intimates by 
the separation, to dip his fingers in the dish prepared for those he delights to honor. 

When the first guests have satisfied their hunger, another set takes their 
place; the central bowl is carried away to be refilled, more bread is brought in, 
and the bowls of honey and lebben, if emptied, are replenished. Napkins, finger- 
bowls, spoons, knives, and forks are unheard of accessories of civilization. All 
-the furniture in the "drawing-room" has been mentioned, and there is little 
more in the " hareem," or women's tent, except rugs and quilts used for bedding, 
and the few brass and earthenware vessels needed for primitive cookery. 

" The Bedouin's life is not a happy one (in winter), " is scribbled upon a 
page of "Notes by the Wayside." The valleys and low-tying plains, selected 
because the winds there are less violent than upon higher ground, are at this 
season sodden with rain, and when the storm is violent, fowls and cattle rush 
pell-mell to the one available shelter, and will not be excluded. The floor is 
drenched by dripping fleeces and hides, and trodden into a quagmire by many 
hoofs, and it is not a rare circumstance for the human family to be driven to take 
refuge in one compartment, leaving the others for the dumb creatures. However 
crowded the premises, the guest, be he friend, stranger, or even foe, has the best 
place in the tent and the choicest portion of food, and the host would protect him 
at the risk of his life against insult or attack, were the assailant of his own tribe 
and kindred. 

The parting token of hospitality that effaces self in the desire to gratify the 
visitor is given by our host, when, the sun breaking forth for a brief half-hour, 
"we are in the act of leaving the encampment, and Alcides quietly tries to get a 
picture of a woman crossing the open space about the principal tent. The intention 
is perceived by the sheikh, who overtakes her with a few strides, lays a hand 
upon her shoulder and turns her toward the kodak. He probably has no 
suspicion that he also appears upon the plate; the attitude is one which his 
compeers would consider derogatory to the dignity of his sex and office. Never- 
theless, we believe that his action would have been the same had he had time 
to weigh the consequences of the attempt to meet the wishes of the parting guest. 



CHAPTER XIX. 



THE SONS OF ISHMAEL. — (CONCLUDED.) 

H LESS formal call than that reported in the last chapter is paid to a 
Bedouin camp of humbler pretensions and many miles distant from 
the powerful sheik whose portrait accompanied that chapter. 
A woman came to our tents this morning before breakfast with 
exactfy two fresh eggs to sell. She belonged to the poorer class of Bedouins, 
emigrants from the wealthier tribes across the Jordan. A thin, miserable-looking 
baby was upon her shoulder, and scratched its head while the kodak, hidden 
by a curtain of the tent door, took a picture of mother and child. She had come 
from an encampment four hills away, she said, and was on her way to Jericho 
to spend the money she would get for her fresh eggs. They were laid yesterday. 
John had his orders to pa}- her three times what they were worth, and to give 
something to the baby. With all my love for the young of the human species, I 
did not care to go nearer this specimen. 

It is after our lunch and siesta, that our journeying brings us in sight of 
the village the woman must have quitted at dawn for the walk over the hills. The 
turn that reveals it, burrowing, as it were, between two sand-mountains, is so 
abrupt that the community is spellbound for an instant. Children playing upon 
the waste lands about the black booths, gape at the approaching party, and the 
one man visible out-of-doors is the only person who has the self-possession to call 
back the pack of yelping, baying curs rushing about the feet of the horses. To 
the momentary consternation succeeds a hurry-skurry on the part of the women, 
led on by a tall figure who is named to us as the principal wife of the sheik. From 
two compartments of the three-roomed tent they issue in frantic haste, laden with 
quilts and rugs, and bearing them into the guest-room. By the time we enter 
this, a sort of bed or divan is laid around two sides of the compartment, and 
cushions are piled at irregular intervals upon it. The wife-in-chief meets me, 
stoops to kiss my hand, carries it to her forehead and her heart, and indicates 
where she would have me sit. When I comply, but do not recline, another older 
woman pats the nearest heap of cushions, and smiles persuasively. A compromise 
is effected by resting an elbow upon this " arm " of the divan. 

The sheik's favorite, registered in our note-book, at one time, as "Zenobia," 
at another, " Boadicea," must have been as nearly handsome in youth as a dusky 
maiden can be, whose forehead, cheeks and chin are tattoed with polka-dots, rings, 
12 (i77) 



i 7 8 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



crescents, stars and other designs, and whose upper and lower eyelids are painted, 
She is stately in shape and carriage, and wears her dark-blue gown and veil, upon 
which are some tatters and embroidery, as an empress her ermine. Taking a 
handful of dried thorns and twigs from a maid, she kneels over the hillock of 
white ashes in the middle of the floor, and herself kindles the fire, pushing up her 

loose sleeves to the elbow, and 
holding back her veil that she 
may blow the embers to a 
blaze. Her slender wrists are 
loaded with silver bracelets, 
and her arms are tattoed as far 
as we can see them. As she 
sits on her heels, watching the 
result of her labor upon the 
creeping flame, we open the 
conversation by thanking her 
for taking so much trouble to 
make us comfortable, and pro- 
testing against further exertion 
on her part. She answers with- 
out withdrawing her e} r es from 
the fire or turning her head. 

' ' She says that she is 
only performing her duty in 
her husband's absence," sa} r s 
David from the other side of 
tlie apartment. 1 ' That, should 
he be told, when he returns, 
that she had done less, he 
would be displeased with her. 
Also, that he would have a 
right to be. ' ' 

Uneasy at the silence that 
prevails, we give the ball of 
talk another shove. 

and that we have seen no 




THIS MAUSOLEUM OF ABSALOM, 



NEAR JERUSALEM. 

' ' Tell her how much we admire those bracelets 
others of that pattern. And if it is quite the thing, ask where we can find some 
like them." 

" In Jerusalem !" returns the sheik-ess, laconically, still staring the fire out 
of countenance. 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



179 



Seeing it, at length, burn brightly, she rises like a queen, for all her tattooing 
and tatters, and sweeps her long robes out of sight. Her mother, very like her 
in face, but gentler of mien, takes her place, producing two brass coffee-pots, with 
tops, one of which she sets in the ashes, the other upon the ground. To a man, 
who is our fellow-guest, 
and who at our entrance, 
la)' asleep upon a mat at 
the back of the tent, is 
assigned the duty of 
roasting the coffee. 

' 1 He is a near rela- 
tive of the family," says 
the interpreter, ' ' and 
may therefore be hon- 
ored by helping prepare 
for entertaining the visi- 
tors." 

The son of the sheik, 
well-knit in figure and of 
good stature, but whose 
otherwise fine face is dis- 
figured by weak eyes, 
now makes his appear- 
ance from another part of 
the village. His black- 
and-white abieh parts 
over an embroidered vest; 
his ample kafeyeh is 
also wrought in various 
colors, and one end is 
flung picturesquely 
across his breast. When 
the coffee is ready, he 
presents a cup to me upon 
one knee, and hopes I 
will honor him by tasting it. So princely is his deportment, so thoroughbred the 
grave courtesy of his behavior to the intruders upon his home, that I entreat 
David to convey him in his very best manner our appreciation of his kindness 
and our sense of our ill-deserts. 




THE SON OF THE SHEIK. 



i8o 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



The acting host listens respectfully, his head slightly bent, and not a muscle 
of his visage relaxing from the pensiveness which seems habitual. Then he turns 
to me and makes a speech cf several sentences. 

" He says that in his father's absence, he hopes you will look upon him as the 
head of the household, and 3-our host. That he is proud and honored by your 
visit to his poor hut. That ne trusts you will remain long, and consider all that 
he has as yours," repeats David, conscientiously. 

In response to our queries, the j^oung man informs us that his father is sheik 
over about one hundred and twenty families, scattered over an area of five or six 

miles. The flocks 
and herds we have 
passed on the road 
since luncheon be- 
long to the tribe. 

The, until 
now 7 , unsmiling 
countenance lights 
up as a little tod- 
dler of two and a 
half 3 T ears runs 
into the tent and 
clasps him about 
the knees. 

' ' My son ! ' ' 
he saj^s pridefully, 
raising him in his 
arms. The old 
woman who made 
the coffee laughs 
sympa t h e t i cally , 
and glances at me 
with the quick 

free-masonry of motherhood which is comprehended the whole world round. 
" How many children have you?" I have David Jamal ask her. 
"Two." 

" Both are married, I suppose?" recollecting that she is mother- in-law T to the 




HANDSOME, BLACK-EYED AND MERRY. 



sheik, 



' ' Neither is married. ' ' 
This ' ' poser ' ' is solved 



subsequently by the intelligence that her two 



bachelor sons are much younger than the favorite of the hareem (who is not the 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



181 



young host's mother, by the way) and that her three daughters do not count in the 
computation of her "jewels." 

There are twelve children, belonging to somebody— or somebodies— in the 
sheik's abode. Handsome, black-eyed and merry younglings, all of them, and as 
ragged and unkempt for the most part as they are jolly. We beg to be allowed to 
photograph a group drawn up in unconscious effectiveness across the open front of 
the " reception room," and it is pleasant to see the sheik's son persuading them to 
stand still, and holding his shy half-sister, the beauty of the band, by the hand to 
reassure her that we intend no harm. A second trial brings in more subjects, and 
in the foreground 
the baby boy, the 
apple of his father's 
eye. 

They are a gen- 
tle, peaceable tribe, 
if we may trust the 
evidence of our ob- 
servation among 
them this afternoon. 
Not a question is 
put to us, and there 
is not a symptom of 
surprise at our de- 
scent, horse and 
foot, upon the en- 
campment. When 
we make a motion 
to go, we are urged the brook kedron. 

to remain to dinner, 
and assured that we 
could be made com- 
fortable for the night. Our diffident petition to be allowed to carry off pictures of 
the village and inhabitants meets with ready assent, the women (unaided by the 
men, we notice), eagerly looping back the western curtain to let in a stream of 
light upon an interior that, even thus, shows but obscurely upon the developed 
"film." 

Good-byes have been exchanged, and our small party is in motion, when the 
sheik's son brings forward his boy — the fond smile which the baby alone has 
called to the serious face, irradiating it — and holds him up to kiss my hand. The 
little fellow, tutored by his parent, goes prettily through the form; I detach a 




182 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



bright flower I am wearing, from my dress, and drop it into the child's hand, and 
we carry away the image of the two in the foregronnd of our memory of the visit. 

A mile further 
upon our road we 
meet the tribal poet, 
and he is duly pre- 
sented to our notice. 

' 1 Herein is nov- 
elty !' ' we can hardly 
await our parting to 
ejaculate. "A Bedouin 
bard ! What does he 
do? and when? and 
how ? and where ?' ' 

As a sequence, we 
enjoy at our tent door 
in the moonlight and 
succeeding the even- 
ing meal an intelligent 
and entertaining lec- 
ture upon Bedouin 
war-songs, love-songs, 
and horse-songs. To 
the latter, the Ishmael- 
itish muse most seri- 
ousl3 r and frequently 
inclines. A metrical 
translation of one 
copied from Alcides' note-book will give a fair idea of their scope and spirit: 

I covet not the hoarded wealth the rich Damascene boasts; 
I covet not the merchant's ships that trade with distant coasts; 
But the man who owns the swiftest steed that sweeps the desert sands, 
His wealth I covet more than all throughout the Prophet's lands. 
I covet him, although he bears no saddle and no rein; 
That horse I'll buy if he should cost all I e'er hope to gain. 
Although my tribesmen call me mad — although they speak me ill, 
I wish not more; my horse shall be my greatest treasure still. 

The Bedouin war-lyrics are in the same key with the old border-ballads. 
While they may not rank in poetic merit with ' ' Chevy Chase ' ' and ' ' Edom 
©'Gordon," we make notes of some which show fire of imagination, as well as ot 




THE TRIBAL POET. 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



183 



spirit. One, founded upon an actual occurrence, is worth relating here. The 
meagre outline can not impress the reader as the hearing moves us in the profound 
stillness of an evening as mild as May-time. The interpreter sits a few feet away, 
the moon full upon the dark, strong features, reciting one line at a time in the 
native Arabic, as in soliloquy, then rendering it into English for our enlightenment. 

A young man's sweetheart was captured by a marauding band with whom her 
people were at war. All through the country-side went the call to arms against 
the robbers who had stolen the fairest treasure of the tribe. When all the men-of- 
Wc r mustered before the tent of the sheik, he said there were too many. There 
would be no honor in attacking the enemy with an overwhelming force. He would 
take with him no boys, only warriors used to carry arms, and as a test, he decreed 
that none should follow him whose beards were not thick enough to hold the 
" beard comb " when stuck into them. 

Now, the youth whose promised bride had been carried off was but twenty 
years of age and had no beard. Should he endure the disgrace of seeing the fight- 
ing men of the tribe depart to recover his betrothed, and revenge him upon her 
captors, and he be left behind with the women and children in the tents ? So, he 
drove the beard comb into his chin, and leaving it sticking in the flesh, presented 
himself thus to the sheik. The chieftain was so delighted with his daring that he 
allowed him to ride forth at his side. The lover recovered his bride, and bore the 
honorable scar to his dying day. 

Another song has to do with the adventures of Ali Diab, a sheik in the land 
of Moab, renowned for bravery. He was proscribed by the Government for daring 
violations of the law, and, while an outlaw, married one of the most beautiful women 
in Syria. Shortly after the wedding, he, his wife and a few horsemen were crossing 
the country when news was brought that a body of the pasha's soldiers were in close 
pursuit of them. The sheik ordered his wife to mount before him on his horse, that 
they might make a desperate flight while the way was yet open. She spat in his 
face and broke into biting reproaches. " I married you not for your beauty but 
your courage," she said. " I see you are a coward and no better than a woman." 

The husband hastily detailed a handful of his men to remain with his wife; 
took the rest along "to guard his back," charged upon the soldiers, killed thirty 
of them, captured their horses; rode back to his bride and they escaped to the 
mountains together. This woman was so fair that a song was sung in her honor 
in Ali Diab's tribe, the refrain of which runs something like this: "We will beat 
the soldiers of the pasha, for the sake of the eyes of Ali Diab's wife." 

The hero of this tale is still living in a hale old age, and is reputed to be the 
mightiest and wealthiest Bedouin in Syria. 



CHAPTER XX. 



"THE CITY OF THE GREAT KING." 

OR a close, comprehensive view of the present city of Jeru- 
salem and the encompassing hills, there is no better 
standing-point than that to which we have ascended 
within fifteen minutes after our arrival. The hour is 
close upon sunset, and this " loggia" upon the roof of 
the Grand New Hotel is an incomparable observatory 
from which to enjoy the rising and going down of the sun. 
M. Antoine Gelat, the prince of hotel managers in 
kindly regard for the comfort of his guests, and a sort of intuition that anticipates 
desires and suits circumstances to their tastes ; is our conductor. He says just 
enough to accustom us to our environment, then stands aside, ready to answer 
further questions, but volunteering no comment. 

We lean upon the railing, our souls in our eyes, and gaze toward the Mount 
of Olives. What pilgrim does not first turn in that direction ? The west is crim- 
son behind it; the white road leading around it to Bethany is partly in the shadow 
creeping up the city-ward slope to the tall tower upon the top, said to mark the 
spot of the Ascension. 

" Which cannot be," — our host suggests, " since we read that ' He led them 
out as far as Bethany.' " 

The intervening roofs and the outer wall of the city conceal Gethsemane from 
us. The evening light folds warmly about the dome of the Mosque of Omar, 
standing all these centuries as a type of the abomination of desolation, above the 
most Holy Place. 

' ' Mount Moriah ! ' ' has been said in our ears — ' ' and over there, Calvary, 
and where we stand, Mount Zion. Across the street is what is known as David's 
Tower. The foundation stones belong to the original structure. You can see 
where the more modern masonry begins. ' ' 

Creeping plants grow rankly in the crevices between the massive stones; upon 
the flag-pole on the top, the crescent- and-star flap feebly in the sunset breeze; the 
shrill sweetness of bugle notes winds upwards above the noises of the street. A 
Turkish garrison occupies the ancient fortress, for long the citadel of the "city 
which David built." 

(185) 




186 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



" It is a little city now," we murmur, voicing the disappointment inevitable 
to those whose imaginations have drunk in since infancy, stories of Jerusalem the 
Golden. 

" Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, is Mount Zion on the 
sides of the north, the city of the Great King." 

The words roll like a majestic chant through the memory. The mountains 
are around about her still, but where are the towers we are bidden to count ? Are 
her bulwarks worth marking ? and her palaces — where are they ? 

' ' It was smaller still when David had reigned here thirty years, ' ' says one, 
4i for Moriah was the Jebusite's threshing-floor." 

Reluctant to admit what is making our hearts sink, we ask for the site of the 




A CITY THAT IS COMPACT TOGETHER." 



Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and it is shown to us, almost beneath our feet. 
The Jaffa gate is close to the hotel; the street conducting from it is the narrow 
artery of city -life. Against a wall where passers-by must stumble over their feet, 
sit three men in attitudes of intense fatigue, or dejection. 

' ' Professional beggars ! ' ' Mr. Gelat remarks. ' ' Picturesque ? Yes ! pictur- 
esqueness is a branch of their business. ' ' 

Nobody notices them, while w T e are looking on. This is the busiest thorough- 
fare in Jerusalem. We had not known that there were so many donkeys in the 
world as we see driven or ridden by here in one hour of the day. (In some parts 
oi Europe, the ass is known as the 6 ' Jerusalem pony. ' ' ) Some carry burdens 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



bigger than themselves of faggots, bales of merchandise, crockery, green vege- 
tables — whatever supplies shops and private houses. Some are bestridden by 
turbaned countrymen, sitting so far back upon the hind quarters that the bulging 
abiehs conceal the animals' tails; upon others are women muffled up to the fore- 
head, with children upon their laps, and panniers dependent from both sides. 
Red tarbooshes make spots of color everywhere; some of the wearers are in native- 
costume, many in Euro- 
pean; peasants are here 
in every variety of shab- 
biness possible to the 
striped robe of cheap 
camel's hair, t h a t i s> 
graceful or ungainly ac- 
cording to the wearer's 
station and bearing; 
Syrian women in white- 
izzars and colored men- 
deels jostle Jewish 
women with shawls over 
their heads, and uncov- 
ered faces; donkey-boys, 
fruit-selling boys, camel- 
boys trudging beside the- 
ugly beasts lunging right 
through the heart of the 
crowd, their great spongy 
hoofs spattering the mud 
right and left from the 
sunken middle of the 
paved way; beggar-boys- 
— even — and here we 
laugh , — newsboys , cry - 
ing what look like evening papers, — are everywhere conspicuous. Some of the 
urchins sport the loyal tarboosh, most of them are bareheaded, and so far as we 
can judge at this height, not one has a personal acquaintance with' a comb, or ever 
heard of a brush. It rained this morning, and from the mire and dirt the many . 
feet stir up evil odors. 

" The joy of the whole earth !" Ah ! 

The lower rim of the sun kisses the hilly horizon, and through the ming- 
ling and nameless clamor of the lower world, a wild alien cry reaches our 




"THE PRINCE OF HOTEIy MANAGERS- 



190 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



outlook, and turns us toward a square minaret, nigh unto the Church of the 
Holy Sepulchre. 

Once heard, it is forever recognizable — that tremulous wail of the Muezzin, 
sent out five times daily to the faithful, whether they will hear, or whether they 
will forbear. 

Allah, hu akbar ! 

La illahillah Allah ; 

Siadnah Mohammed Rasoul Allah 

Hayah Allah II Salah ! 

Hayah Allah II Fallah ! 

(God is great ! 
There is but one God ; 

Our Lord Mohammed is his apostle (or prophet). 

Come to prayers ! 
Come to worship !) 

Each phrase is said twice before passing to the next; at the conclusion of the 
call, the whole formula is repeated from first to last, faster than before, and to a 
different tune, if tune there be. 

This is the famous call to pra}^er of which such capital is made by writers of 
travels and Oriental tales. It is, as I have said, peculiar. To be frank, it is not 
musical, and except when heard from a distance on a still evening not even pleas- 
ant. As to the devoutness with which it is enunciated and heard, candor com- 
pels the admission that the whole performance is perfunctory to the last degree, 
and that the effect upon the listener is very unlike what we have been led to 
expect from the use made of the " much speaking " of Moslems by Sunday- 
school orators and returned missionaries. As the many a's (as broad as cir- 
cumflex accents can make them) are shaken and quavered and trilled over the 
red tarbooshed heads of the faithful, we seek in vain for tokens of the profound 
impression we have been toli. is invariably produced by the solemn summons. 

Between the machicolations of the venerable tower opposite, are visible sol- 
dierly figures, lounging and smoking and evidently off-guard. So far from kneel- 
ing with their faces toward Mecca and going through the form of prayer, 
they continue to saunter, to chat and idly survey the street passengers, who 
for their part, are as deaf to the worse than vain repetitions agitating the air 
about them as if there were not a minaret within ten miles of Jerusalem. 

The beggars pull themselves up and shuffle out of sight, the sunshine having 
left them in chill shadow; camel-drivers hold on their heedless way in the middle 
of the street; the driver of a muddy hack drawn up in a corner near the Jaffa gate, 
eyes with more sense of humor than one usually detects among the saturnine peo- 
ple, a lively tussle between two donkey-boys in front of a huckster's booth; the 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



191 



lordly ' ' kervasse ' ' (orderly) of a foreign consul — gorgeous in gold lace, portent- 
ous as to sword, official baton and ultra-official frown — awaits his chief's return 
from the photograph and olive wood bazaar across the street. Nobody prays that 
we can discover, unless it be a white-bearded man upon a neighboring house-top, 
sitting motionless with his back toward us — but, as we now perceive, with his face 
turned away from Mecca. 1 
We are unaffectedly sorry to take the pith out of an illustration so potent in 
Stirring up Christian listeners to emulate the devotion prevalent in 1 ' lands be* 




" PICTURESQUENESS IS A PART OE THEIR BUSINESS." 



nighted " — but the facts are precisely as I state them. Four minarets rear bal- 
conied heads heavenwards within range of attentive ears, and a good glass shows 
us as many muezzins popping out of inner chambers, like cuckoos when the clocks 
Strike the hour, and uttering, still cuckoo-like, their "wobbling " cry. 

"We expected to see every man fall upon his face and go through his 
prayers," we complain. " It must cost a great deal to build up these minarets — 
(there must be at least a dozen in this little city) — and to employ the muezzins, 
yet nobody pays any attention to them. Is it so everywhere !" 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



193 



A Jerusalem Reman Catholic comes forward to reply: 

' ' Even in the East, people are too busy in towns to pray so many times a 
day, unless they are very religious. Most Moslems here content themselves with 
morning and evening exercises. In the country it is different. " 

We face the ruddy glory of the west, and without the exchange of a word or 
glance, each knows that the other recalls 1 ' The Angelus, ' ' and the bowed peasants 

in the foreground, 
the prayerful stillness 
that may be felt of 
the fields at eventide. 

Drawn darkly 
against the sky that 
palpitates with fervid 
color, is a windmill 
solitary upon a dis- 
tant hill; pale stone 
buildings, some large 
and all new, start 
into prominence in 
middle distance and 
foreground. The city 
without the gates is 
growing fast, and 
will soon exceed in 
dimensions, as in 
neatness and stabil- 
ity, the old town with 
its strait, steep alleys 
and irregular lines 
of houses. 

There are no 
gas-works and no 
water-works. After 
nightfall, if onewould 
venture abroad, he 
must have an attendant with a lantern. The water supply is drawn from cisterns 
of vast depth, some of which never go dry. In a drizzling rain the streets are foul 
with semi-liquid filth; when the showers fall heavily, much of this is swept down to 
lower levels. One does not care to calculate what proportion of noxious matter 
percolates through the soil to the mighty honeycomb of cisterns underlying the town. 
13 




THE DRIVER OF A MUDDY HACK. 



194 THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 

Old Jerusalem is buried many feet below the surface of modern by trie rub- 
bish of seventeen overthrows of the City of the Great King. All her pleasant 
places, often restored, were laid waste beyond the hope of rehabilitation, when the 
plowshare of Titus furrowed the hill of Moriah before the generation had passed 
away that heard the Galilean Teacher's lament over the ''Jerusalem that killed 
the prophets." The Jerusalem who in three days' time would hound to a male- 
factor's death the Greatest of them all. To our left, between us and the long, 
straight brow of Scopus and rising above the city wall, low tombstones crown 
another hill. Our eyes never leave it for long, however they may stray as con- 
vent, hospice, asylum and church are named to us. The horizontal sun-rays 
strike and linger upon it, while we take one final look before going below, and 
the light brings out the tender hues of verdure that always clothe it, even in 
winter. 

The green hill far away, 
Without a city wall — ■ 

is what, after all, we have come out to see in this far land — a veritable wilderness 
to him whose happiness depends upon the luxuries of nineteenth century civili- 
zation. 

Voices — a heavy bass and a light treble — clash together between the walls 
shutting in the stairway by which we have climbed to the roof. A dumpy woman 
pants to the upper floor, followed by a thin man. We know the smooth, round 
face of one and the sharpened red beard of the other. They are not staying in the 
Grand, and have only come to get the view. Mr. Gelat advances urbanely; Dr. 
Sharpe introduces, first himself, and then his wife, and ' ' hopes there is no intru- 
sion." 

The hospitable manager sets his mind at rest in some fitly chosen words. 

"You are well known to me by reputation, Dr. Sharpe, and I shall be hon 
ored by any use you can make of my house or my poor services. The view is, aa 
you see, extensive. You are, I presume, familiar with the several points of 
interest visible from here?" 

Mrs. Sharpe utters a little cry. She has walked to the farthest end of the 
"loggia," and clasps her hands ecstatically: 

' ' I had no idea you were so near that dear, dear Church of the Holy 
Sepulchre ! How lovely !" 

' 'A misnomer, which perpetuates the wildest fable of the hundreds the Mid- 
dle Ages have bequeathed to us ! " we hear her husband begin— and hasten down 
the steps. 



CHAPTER XXI. 



"THE MOUNT CALLED OLIVET." 

IT is still made conspicuous among the mountains round about Jerusalem 
by the olive groves clothing the sides and summit. In spring-time,- the 
apparently barren reaches which are unshaded by trees will be mantled 
with verdure and flowers. In late autumn, and in the winter, the 
mighty slopes are a study in neutral tints, the silvery gray of the olives 
contrasting but faintly with the darker uniformity of color in soil and stones. 

If we would ascend to the church and convent built upon the crown of the 
long hill, we must walk or ride. Driving in any kind of vehicle is out of the 
question. This has been set fairly before us, but we sally forth from the Jaffa 
gate, with an inadequate conception of what lies before us on this bland December 
afternoon. Massoud, refreshed by a couple of days in the stable, curvets and 
prances ahead of the two donkeys ridden by David and his charge. Jamal's is a 
brisk brown beast, with an amiable, conscientious amble, a pigmy beside the 
dignified creature, white as wool, allotted to me. 

' ' Tradition tells us that the Queen of Sheba rode a white ass when she came 
to visit Solomon, madame," I hear, as we skirt the city wall and see upon our left 
the heights where Titus massed the Roman legions for the terrible siege begun at 
the Feast of the Passover, A. D. 70, to end five months later in the destruction 
of temple and citadel. ''And kings' sons rode upon such. It is therefore 
counted a royal animal." 

The royal animal beneath me is broad and stalwart and comely — of his kind. 
He is also so lazy as to require the jerk of Serkeese at his head, and the goad of a 
second boy upon his flanks when we begin to climb. The flesh may be strong, 
but the spirit it encases is at once unstable and rebellious. 

I have not found this out when we pace down the long declivity, passing on 
one hand the "green hill," on the other the Damascus gate. The road is wide 
and smooth, and near the bottom bears away from the city wall to cross a bridge. 
" The Brook Kidron !" says the guide. 

We draw up to the side of the bridge and look down into the dry valley. It 
is not even a ravine now, which spring floods might fill. Olive trees grow upon 
the accumulated debris of eighteen centuries. If there be water in the ancient 
channel, it never makes its way to the surface. The so-called Tomb of the Virgin 

(196) 



198 THE- FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 

is on our left hand. In a few months, upon the day fixed by ecclesiastical dogma 
as the birthday of our Lord's mother, thousands of pilgrims will pitch tents and 
booths about tomb and chapel; brass bands will be in full blast all day and all 
night long; all manner of merchandise will be peddled along the road. 

1 ' Just like a picnic, ' ' says a Greek Christian whom we encounter on the bridge. 

The monument with a square base and peaked tower in the deeper part of the 
valley upon our right, is known as the Tomb of Absalom. 




WE GAIN AN OPEN SPACE.'* 



"Where he was never buried," comes from the back of the brisk brown 
donkey. ' ' If the Captain will look at second Samuel, eighteenth chapter and 
seventeenth verse, he will read that the young man Absalom was cast into a pit in 
the wood of Ephraim. Learned men think that this may be the pillar alluded to 
in the eighteenth verse (if you please, sir !) which 1 Absalom in his life- time 
reared up for himself in the king's dale.' " 

At the name of the undutiful son a pathetic scene rises before us. We turn 
silently to another part of the sacred record and read how ' ' all the country wept 



200 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



with a loud voice" as the deposed king and his followers passed over Kidron; 
then, — that: 

" David went up by the ascent of Mount Olivet, and wept as he went up and 
had his head covered, and he went barefoot; and all the people that was with him 
covered every man his head and they went up, weeping as they went up." 

We are still reading when rasping voices smite our ears. Close to our stirrups 
is the vanguard of the forces drawn up on the sunny side of the walled way by 
which we are to make the ascent. The village of Siloam, the houses of which 
are scarcely distinguishable from the gray rocks to which they cling, lies a short 
half mile away. Above and beyond it, is the group of wretched huts tenanted by 
Jerusalem lepers, and this thoroughfare along the Kidron, and so on into the open 
country, is the pariah's stamping-ground. Old and young of both sexes haunt 
the spot on every moderately fine day. Some carry pails and baskets into which 
passing market-gardeners drop vegetables and fruit. One and all beg, and that 
continually, shamelessly making capital of mutilation and other disfigurement that 
sicken our souls and senses. David charges into the line closing across our way: 

"We went this way this morning, and gave you backshish — and you know 
it !" he vociferates in stinging Arabic. " I am ashamed of you !" 

At the admonition they slink back mute, if not abashed. That a party must 
not be bled twice in one day is a tenet in their unwritten code of honor and business. 

The narrow roadway soon twists and contracts into a bridle-path. A path by 
courtesy only, for the rolling stones of all shapes and sizes are as plentiful under 
our feet as on both sides of the route. Serkeese tugs hard at my royal beast's 
halter, the other boy applies a vigorous shoulder to the creature's haunches as we 
go up and up, tacking across the steep breast of the hill. Now and then, the 
efforts of both drivers are ineffectual to prevent the donkey from stopping short in 
an especially precipitous place, and, drawing a long breath that heaves one high 
in the saddle, venting his emotion in what is surely the most ear-splitting and 
incredibly protracted bray that ever expanded asinine ribs. The experience is 
exasperating — but funny — up to the seventh repetition. 

Still tacking, we gain an open space, — a waste of loose stones — not far from 
the Church of the Ascension, and turn for a long look at the view. The day is 
very still; the sunlight is colorless; beyond gray hillside and melancholy olive- 
trees, and across the valley where the Kidron flows no longer, and cool Siloam is 
choked by the heaps upon heaps of pleasant places laid waste — rise the hoary 
walls of Jerusalem. 

Here Hushai overtook David, and was sent back into Jerusalem by his master 
to defeat the counsels of Ahithophel. For aught that we, or any one now alive 
can know, it might have been upon this very spot that our Lord sat down to rest, 
after departing from the temple, and staying in the outer vestibule at His disciples' 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



20I 



appeal to look upon the great stones to be thrown down before the passing of the 
faithless generation. The leaves of our "guide-book" do not flutter in the 
waveless air as we look for the story: 

' ' And as He sat upon the Mount of Olives, the disciples came unto Him 
privately, saying: ' Tell us, when shall these things be ? And what shall be the 
sign of the coming?' " 

If this be true, here, or near where we read these words, were given the 




"THEY SUNK BACK MUTK." 



parables of the Ten Virgins and the Ten Talents, and the awful picture was 
drawn of the division of the righteous from the wicked. 

We visit Gethsemane on the way down. The inclosed "Garden," nevei 
large, has been subdivided into what may be called flower-plots, that Greek and 
Roman Catholic may no longer disgrace the name and memory of a common 
Master by hideous wranglings. Each sect has its own paled-in territory. Having 
left our beasts of burden and our attendants at the end of the short lane leading 
to the main road, we have the place to ourselves, but for a lay-brother in a wide 



202 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



felt hat who is "pottering " with a hoe among the borders of old-fashioned cottage- 
flowers, under the most aged of the olive trees. Without so much as visiting the 
Grotto of the Agony, or the connecting subterranean chapel where are shown the 
tomb of St. Anna, the mother of the Virgin Mary and that of Mary's husband, 
Joseph, or caring to measure the distance — " as it were a stone's cast " — dividing 
the Grotto of the Agony from the place without the garden — designated as that 
where Peter, James and John slept while their Lord wept and prayed — we bow to 




"OVER AND BEYOND THE ROUNDED CROWNS OF THE OUVES." 



the solemn influences of the hallowed precincts. Somewhere on this sunny 
•declivity was the retreat to which the Man of Sorrows so often resorted with His 
disciples, that the arch-traitor knew only too well where He was to be found after 
the Passover feast. The olives, gaunt and gnarled with }^ears, that gleam in the 
afternoon light, have sprung from the soil that gave foothold to the trees of the 
Gethsemane He loved. He must have crossed the brook by some such route as 
we have taken, and the tinkle of the running water may have joined with the sigh 
of the night-wind in the olive-boughs to lull the overwrought disciples to slumber. 
We forget traditions and monkish superstition in pondering these things, our faces 



AGED OLIVE-TREE IN GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE. (203) 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



205 



turned toward Jerusalem that, held not back, after slaying the prophets, from 
denying the Holy One and Just, and killing the Prince of Life. 

The muezzins are answering one another from minaret to minaret, the harsh 
cry mellowed in the passage across the valley, when we withdraw our eyes from 
what our hearts and memories must ever hold. David stands without the gate, 
and the lay -brother comes up with a sprig of rosemary. 

Seeing me examine the gift in the hope of finding a woody stem, he goes back 
into the garden foi a stouter spray, and breaks off a piece of lavender as well. 

" Both will grow, if planted," the interpreter says for him to me. 

' 1 Would he give me earth in which to plant them ?' ' 

He not only will, but hastens to transfer a generous double-handful to a stout 
envelope David produces from his inexhaustible pockets, and furthermore insists 
upon my acceptance of marigold and princess-feather seeds, pulled from dry stalks 
beside him. 

David smiles, gravely indulgent to the simply uttered admonition accompany- 
ing the humble marigold. 

" He warns you, madame, that the flower requires sun and a warm soil. He 
thinks you are from a far-off and a cold country, like Russia, from which hundreds 
of pilgrims come yearly to Gethsemane." 

It falls upon our exalted mood like the touch of a warning hand that we will 
never return from our ' * far-off' ' home upon a second pilgrimage to the Garden of the 
Agony and Bloody Sweat. We have repeatedly remarked to one another that full 
appreciation and right feeling do not come to us until we review the moment or 
hour in thought — that warmth and thrill then are like the afterglow of the 
departed sun. We shall always be glad that the Figure, never distant from our 
spiritual apprehension in our daily walks and rides about Jerusalem, has never 
been nearer than in the solemn shadows now gathering under the trees of the 
garden into which He entered that night with His disciples, " As He was wont." 
The breath of His presence, the calm, and the blessing of it may well abide 
here now and forevermore. 

We ride a little way back up the Mount called Olivet, to possess ourselves of 
a glimpse we had awhile ago, over and between the rounded crowns of the olives, 
of a hill- top rising dimly through the gauzy haze, " beyond the city wall." 

"By thine Agony and Bloody Sweat, by thy Cross and Passion, good Lord, 
deliver us ! " 



CHAPTER XXII. 



BETHANY. 

— excellent road connects Jerusalem with Bethany. The city boast* 
Jj 1 of but one handsome carriage ("the Landau," belonging to the 
(f I Grand Hotel) , yet comfortable conveyances may be hired without the 
I Jaffa Gate. That into which David packs our rugs, the camera, and 
lastly the women of the little party, is commodious, if shabby. 
" As you will observe, madam, it has been washed this morning," says the 
honest dragoman, withdrawing a space to contemplate complacently the effect of 




"it has been washed this morning." 

the unwonted process. " As I have said to the driver, a mudd}' carriage does not 
go well with a day like this. ' ' 

We have alighted to look back at the city, and to remark again upon the 

(206) 



(207) 



2o8 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



growth of the settlement without the walls, for the most part hospitals, convents 
and the private residences of consuls and well-to-do citizens. The day is glorious ; 
respiration is a luxury. The stony hill-sides can never look cheerful except in 
the brief blossom season ; but under the cloudless blue arch of this sky, they are 
resigned in expression and almost benignant. 

My companions within the lately-washen vehicle are a newly arrived fellow- 
country-woman, bright of face and of nature, and the native Syrian matron who 
acts as my intelligent interpreter in the jealously-guarded homes where the foot 
of a strange man may not tread. We have crossed the waterless bed of Kidron ; 
run the gauntlet of the leprous beggars, mustering in force on the south side of 
the wall of Gethsemane, holding our breaths in passing, the odor of the collective 
bodies being overpowering when so large a delegation is abroad ; have traced with 
serious eyes the ' ' Path of the Captivity ' ' winding around the shoulder of the 
height upon which the city is built, said by tradition to be the way along which 
Our Lord was led after his betrayal. 

We have flanked Olivet and come into sight of the open country. The road 
is lively with foot-passengers, generally market-women with great baskets or bun- 
dles of green stuff upon their heads — oftener bundles than baskets. It is surpris- 
ing what variety of commodities can be contained in a fold of the Syrian woman's 
blue cotton robe, or be enveloped in the dingy cloth knotted about her cargo. 
Beets, turnips, cauliflower, carrots, eggs, oranges, potatoes, cheeses — chiefest of 
all, cabbages — are thus carried with ease and in safety. Donkeys pace by, under 
loads of faggots and greens, and dark-visaged men seated stolidly upon the beasts' 
rumps, and we meet a string of camels, coming up from Jericho, loaded with 
oranges and citrons, and hugging one side of the white road. Upon the hill-top 
to the right we see a building which we are told is the reputed house of Simon the 
Leper. 

' 1 Then we must be nearing Bethany ? ' ' 
"We are in Bethany ! " 

The carriage has come to a full stop again, and we get out in blank bewilder- 
ment. Upon one hand the ground slopes away into stony fields ; upon the other, 
half ruined huts of stone, perhaps twenty in number, straggle up a rudely-ter- 
raced hill. The invariable group of children, a couple of beggars, and divers 
women, appear in doors and from behind walls to stare at us. The terraces and 
houses have an intermittent backing of the saddest-looking olives we have yet be- 
held in this saddened land. 

' ' Bethany ! " we reiterate in wonder and disbelief <£ Where is the town ? " 

This is all of it, and the two women who are bribed with a few " metalliks" 
(pennies) to stand out upon the platform of their house to be photographed are 
representative matrons. They have no scruples about letting us see their faces, 



THE FX,AG OF THE ORIENT. 



209 



etiquette in this respect being less stringent among the peasants than in the town 
and with the higher classes of society. Whatever other objects anc occasions of 
carefulness and trouble these housewives may have, the business of keeping 
themselves and their children clean is not ranked as an essential to peace of mind 
or comfort. Their own gowns 
are ragged and dirty ; their hands 
horny and filthy, albeit the nails, 
like those of the little girl who 
lugs an inconceivably dirty baby 
upon her hip, are dyed with 
henna. The children are, as the 
uninitiated new arrival at my 
elbow shudderingly whispers, 
" horrors ! " sore-eyed, barefoot- 
ed and unclean. One, sour of 
visage, a kafeyeh, stiff with 
dirt, bound above matted locks, 
hugs a mangy dog, whose eyes 
are as sore as his master's. 

We are on our way up a 
narrow, steep alley, abominable 
for pollutions, but the only means 
of approach to "the best house 
in Bethany, ' ' when a bo^ bounds 
into the track, and stops to in- 
spect us. By some accident, his 
face is clean, and the soiled 
sheepskin jacket beneath his 
abieh does not disguise a certain 
careless grace of bearing. His 
eyes are bright and healthy, his 
cheeks glow rosily. 

" ' Ruddy, and w T ithal of a 
beautiful countenance, and goodly to look at ! ' 
David ! and let me have your picture. ' ' 

The model frowns slightly, the sun striking full in his eyes, but the erect 
carriage of figure and head that gives something kingly to the boyish figure is 
preserved. 

"Such a fellow must be regarded as a freak in Bethany," comments his ad- 
mirer, clicking the film into position. 




YOUNG DAVID." 



quotes Alcides ' ' Stand, young 



210 THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 

The best house in Bethany is at hand. The stone platform, or terrace, on 
which it perches sets the front and only door ten feet above the level of the near- 
est neighbor's. A ladder, fitted with rungs, not steps, must be mounted if we 
would accept the invitation extended in smile and beck by the mistress of the 
eyrie. One by one, we three women adventure the climb, and stand beside our 
hostess on a ledge, maybe fifteen feet in width. It looks down into the court of 
the 1 1 House of I^azarus, ' ' a blackened building that must now be used as a mill 
or granary, for through sashless windows protrude sheaves of grain and bundles 
of straw. 

In the reeking court-yard where the sun seldom falls, two sparrows twitter 
happily over some kernels that have dropped from above. Another pair, as busy 
and cheery, sport upon the broken stones of the time-stained wall, pecking their 
noon meal out of the chinks and crannies. 

" 'Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing,' " one of us breathes softly before 
leaving the little preachers and the cheerful light of day behind. 

The door opens into a vaulted chamber that cannot be over twelve feet square. 
There is no window, but six queer niches in the sides of the room are utilized as 
cupboards. The walls are whitewashed, and above the niches are gaudity-colored 
designs of palms, flowers, fruits, and odd green hands, with outspread fingers 
pointing upward. 

"To keep off the Evil Eye," explains my interpreter, avoiding looking at the 
mystic signs while she speaks. 

To direct attention to them by any manifestation of curiosity on our part 
would excite suspicious alarm. 

Quilts and matting are dragged from a pile at the back of the room to supply 
us with seats. A man, his wife, and five daughters of assorted ages, have their 
only home here, sleeping, eating, sitting and living here the year around. Cook- 
ing is done over an earthenware brazier, exhibited to us pridefully by the house- 
wife. The bread, she tells us, is kneaded into flat rounds which are laid upon hot 
pebbles in the brazier, patted down, and covered with a fire of dried camel's ma- 
nure. A heap of this fuel fills one cupboard ! Flour for each day's provision is 
ground in the morning. A laughing-ej^ed girl of thirteen, persuaded by the gra- 
cious arts of our interpreter, sits down upon the floor, takes the mill — a stone, laid 
in a socket and worked back and forth by an upright pin, or handle of wood — be- 
tween her feet, pours in grain and begins the work. 

"But it is nothing without the song," interrupts the interpreter. "Sing, 
will you not ? These ladies have never heard the Syrian grinding-song. ' ' 

The fair performer requires as much coaxing as the musical prodigy of an 
American provincial circle, but demur and diffidence finally overcome by the win- 
some interpreter, she chants in a fresh, tuneful voice, to the accompaniment of 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



211 



the mill. The effect is marvelously melodious, the hum of the stone in its groove 
keeping perfect time with the song. Our Syrian matron translates what I seize a 
moment to jot down in my note-book, and subsequently pass over to Alcides the 
Rhymer. I wish it were possible to give with it the beat and whirr that, as I 
read the faithful translation which retains the very measure of the rude ballad, 
seems to underrun the voice in my ears : 

Soldiers ! soldiers ! far over the sea ! 
As we grind the yellow grain, may the Prophet hear our plea ! 
May he spread his mighty arms in protection round your host, 
And hide you in their shelter safe when perils threaten most. 
May he guard his faithful followers wherever they may be ! 

Soldiers ! soldiers ! far over the sea ! 

The cupboards, unscreened by curtain or door, hold, besides the cakes of fuel, 
earthenware jars and bowls, the inevitable apparatus for coffee-making, and a big 
metal pan covered with a mat of plaited straw. The day's baking is in this basin, 
and since we cannot wait for coffee, we must eat, each of us, a morsel of the 
tough, w r arm cake. It is curiously stamped by the hot pebbles, and dark-gray in 
color. Yet we accept it with smiling gratitude, and feign to swallow it, retiring 
in fair order toward the door, while our interpreter voices our thanks for hospi- 
tality received. 

Jamal and Alcides in the lower court are the cynosure of an admiring group. 
The Bethany women are notable of their kind, carrying on (for Palestine) a 
thriving trade with Jerusalem in butter milk, eggs, cheese and butter. One of 
the most prosperous listens with downcast eyes to David's talk of crops and 
weather, cunningly drawn out while Alcides retires to a ledge far enough away to 
focus the modern Martha of Bethany. Every line of her coarse features ex- 
presses the cumbering cares of much serving in home and market. Her baby 
sleeps in a stout bag suspended between her shoulders by a cord passed across her 
forehead ; on her head is the flat basket that went with her and the baby to town 
(a Sabbath day's journey), filled with butter, cheese and eggs, and holds now 
sundry parcels of groceries and other household necessaries. The baby-bag is a 
curious thing, made of dyed goat's hair cords, ingeniously netted and trimmed 
with long fringes. 

"Will she sell it?" I ask. 

" She will sell anything ! " tersely, and the bargain begins. 

Other and shrewder lines cross Martha's visage. She is in her element. 

Withdrawn a few paces from the battlefield, we are kept by the laughing in- 
terpreter in touch with the principal actors. Martha draws the first blood by a 
firm demand for sixteen shillings, English money (four dollars) . 

1 ' Is the woman mad ! ' ' David raises appealing eyes and hands to the 



212 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



presumably sane spectators. "We don't want to buy the baby, too! Only 
the bag ! " 

Martha does not join in the merriment excited by the wilful misinterpreta- 
tion. Buying and selling are not matters for jest. She chaffers valiantly, but 
the end of the ten-minute duel is the purchase of the gayly -colored netting at 

half the sum she asked at first. My Syrian 

friend interferes when I order the coachman to 
put the bag with other belongings of ours in 
front of the carriage. 

1 ' It will go first to my house, if you 
please," she says, significantly. "I have a 
garden where it can be sunned, and fumigated 
with burning sulphur, and so be made quite 
safe to be packed with clean things. You 
shall have it in a few days. ' ' 

A warm discussion arises on the way 
home. Alcides has been thinking. 

"We see how little social and domestic 
customs have changed in this part of the 
world since Bible times " — is the summing up 
of these meditations. 

" The Bed uin of 1894 A. D. is the Bed- 
ouin of 1894 B. C. That was in Abraham's 
day — wasn't It, David?" 

' ' Between the eighteenth and twenty-sec- 
ond chapters of Genesis, Captain." 

" Dress, modes of speech, tricks of trade, 
marrying and giving in marriage — all these 
things are so much the same now as then, 
that I believe the original Martha of Bethany 
lived and looked very much as her sister of the 
nineteenth century lives and acts and looks 
now. The whole family probably lived in one 
ten-by-ten room, and sat on the floor to eat 
and talk, and lay upon dirty mats to sleep, and crouched, on rainy days, over a 
brazier in a windowless chamber, and were upon as bad terms with soap, water 
and towels, and combs, as at present. ' ' 

It is a bomb that bursts disastrously. The sketch is repulsive, unnatural — 
we declaim — if not actuallv blasphemous. We remind the transgressor that the 
bleak hills about us blossomed as the rose in the days of Israel's glory ; that 




"LISTENS WITH DOWNCAST EYES." 



* 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 213 

Herod the Magnificent was on the throne and abundant in public works when the 
Nazarene Teacher withdrew to Bethany at eventide after the day's disputation in 
the Temple, or many hours of healing and talking in market-place and by the 
waysides. At last the gentle voice of the sweet-faced American traveler is heard. 
She speaks modestly — but confidently. 

" I cannot think that our Martha was like that ! Or that her house and 




clothes — and children, if she had any — were dirty. For you know — 'Jesus loved 
Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus ! ' And Bethany was His chosen resting- 
place. Martha's home may have been humble. It must have been neat and 
peaceful." 

A sudden and a lasting calm ensues that has not been broken when we quit 
the carriage to walk a little way up the side of Olivet to the old Bethany road, 
and gaze down upon Jerusalem as our Lord beheld it four days before the shout 
of ' ' Hosanna ' ' was exchanged for the howl of ' ' Crucify Him ! ' ' 

• 



CHAPTER XXIII. 



ON THE HOUSE-TOP. 

OHK roof is gained by means of a succession of narrow stone stairways 
built upon the outside of the house. At the head of the last flight the 
host meets us, having heard our voices. 
A handsome, well-made man, in European costume except for the 
red tarboosh that proclaims him a Turkish subject, he smiles genially at our 
approach. 

" You are welcome," he assures us in excellent English. " I am sorry my 
wife is not at home, but she will return soon. Will you walk in ?" 
" Presently," we reply. 

For a moment we must get our breath and look about us at the odd, charming 
place to which we have climbed, and fill our lungs with the delicious air, the 
sweetest we have tasted in Jerusalem. It pours in upon the enclosed house-top 
through geometrical patterns of short tiles set horizontally in mortar upon a stone 
wall six feet high. In the middle of the area, blocks of stone are built into a 
square platform with sloping sides, and this is surmounted by a box filled with 
earth. Flowers grow luxuriantly on all sides; pots of flowering plants and vines 
stand against the sunniest side of the little courtyard and crowd a graded wooden 
frame up to the top of the wall. It is the bonniest nook our eyes have lighted 
upon since we left Beirut gardens, and we say it in frank admiration. Gratified by 
our appreciation of the advantages of his dwelling-place, the host enlarges further 
upon these. 

' 1 We are raised so high above the level of the city that we get no dust, no 
fog, no bad smells, no noise. And the view — ah ! that you shall see when 
we go into the room. Here it is only to be had in bits, by peeping through these 
holes. You see this is one of the oldest houses in Jerusalem — very old and solid. 
The walls are thick, as you have noticed. It must be hundreds, — yes, hundreds 
of years old. At that time the Moslems had entire possession of the city, and built 
their houses to please themselves. Their wives must have air and sunshine, and 
being women — and human beings" — smilingly — "they would not be contented 
without seeing something of the world. So they made these walls high, that 
they could not look over, and that nobody could look in at them, and exchange 
signals, you know, but with peep-holes out of which the women could see what 
was going on outside." 

C214) 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



215 



' 1 What does your wife say to this sort of prison ?' ' 

" She does not mind. It makes the place more private; in fact, gives us a 
pleasant sitting-room when the sun is not too hot. And on moonlight evenings 
when the weather is mild and the flowers in bloom, a man cannot wish for a nicer 
place for smoking his cigarette with his wife by his side and maybe, friends 
dropping in to help us enjoy it." 

' 1 You do not hide your wife away then behind curtains and lattices after the 
fashion of some of your countrymen ?' ' 

' ' I trust my wife ! ' ' drawing himself up unconsciously, yet with a good- 




" AN ODD, CHARMING PLACE." 



humored laugh. " We of the Greek Church have generally more liberal views on 
some subjects than Moslems. Ah?" 

We have heard nothing except the soft rush of the breeze through the ' ' peep- 
holes ' ' and the light rustle of the vine-leaves against the wall, but he turns 
expectantly toward the staircase. 

Something white rises into sight in the doorway giving upon the flight, and 
a little woman enveloped from head to foot in an izzar, trips forward upon the 



2l6 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



stone floor, pauses abruptly at perceiving us, and raising the blue mendeel from 
her face, stands hesitatingly, holding nervously to the edges of the white mantle 
which is usually cast off the instant the wearer finds herself within doors. 

"My wife, madame ! my wife, sir !" utters the proud husband. She kisses 
my hand, lays hers timidly into that extended by the masculine visitor, and looks 

in mute appeal to her mentor. 

" She understands English when it 
is spoken to her, but she will not try to 
speak it herself," he says, indulgently. 
"She would say that she does not 
comprehend it, but I know better, and 
I am sure, too, that she could speak 
it if she were not afraid to attempt it. 
She is what }'OU call diffident." 

At a word in Arabic, the little 
woman motions us to enter her dwell- 
ing, stands aside until her husband 
has passed in after us, slips off a pair 
of low shoes, with coquettish rosettes 
upon the instep, at the threshold, and 
follows us in her stocking-feet. They 
are pretty feet, we notice, and clad in 
scarlet stockings, and she looks very 
small for the loss of her slipper-heels. 

' ' Let us make a little chamber, I 
pray thee, on the wall, and let us set 
for him there a bed, and a table, and a 
stool and a candlestick; and it shall 
be, when he cometh to us, that he 
shall turn in thither. ' ' 

We comprehend it all with one 
glance around the ' ' little chamber. ' ' 
How the prophet might gain the retreat thus prepared for him without entering 
any other part of the house, and without speaking to any of the family. How 
welcome, too, was the absolute quiet of the seclusion thus offered the foot-weary, 
nerve-tired man of God. 

The room is of fair dimensions and massive in construction, with a groined 
roof. The windows are deeply embrasured, and from one end projects an alcoved 
casement, raised two feet or more from the floor, and cushioned with red chintz, 
as is the conventional divan running around two sides of the apartment. Before 




THE HOST MEETS US. 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



217 



we sit down we are invited to look at the view, and for this purpose we are told to 
step, although we protest, into the cushioned alcove. It hangs upon the outer 
wall, as we now perceive, and overlooks, beyond the nearer jumble of tiled roofs 
and chimneys, the Mosque of Omar, about which we can trace from this altitude 
the boundaries of the Temple Area. A sudden dip outside the city walls means 
the Valley of Jehosha- 
phat, and then arises the 
Mount that is called 
Olivet, with the church 
and campanile upon its 
level brow. Scopus joins 
it on our left. If the 
Jew householder of A. D. 
70 built as high as his 
Moslem successor, what 
an observatory would this 
have been from which to 
mark the manoeuvres of 
the investing Romans ! 
The free air sweeps 
gladly by us, the tran- 
quil blue of the Syrian 
sky, falls, an unruffled 
canopy, behind farther 
and bare hills. Titus 
leveled all the trees 
about the city, and Pales- 
tine has never stood 
firmly enough and long 
enough upon her feet 
since to clothe her deso- 
late places with forests. 

The floor of the house-top chamber is covered with Damascus rugs, and 
besides the divan, there are several light chairs; cupboards are numerous, and 
hidden by curtains. One is exposed because it is filled with books. There are 
little stands here and there, and bits of bric-a-brac, for the master of the quaint 
abode is a popular dragoman and has traveled much. The wife, black-eyed and 
"sonsie," wears a blue cloth bodice and skirt, a gold chain and an embroidered 
mendeel, and a bouquet of living flowers is pinned to the bodice. She is as 
neat and bright as her home, and steps noiselessly about making ready for our 




ONE CANNOT? WISH FOR A NICER PI,ACE. 



218 



the; flag of the orient. 



-entertainment. A stand, bearing small glass dishes of quince conserves, and a 
basket filled with candies and nuts, is set before us, and upon another is 
arranged a tea-equipage. We have been given the choice between tea and coffee, 
and have gratefully chosen the former. The little matron opens a blind door in 
the wall, disclosing spirit-lamp and kettle, and falls to work to make the beverage 
my soul loveth, deftly and swiftly. 

We have sipped it satisfiedly and tasted the conserves, and munched a 
bon-bon, and the hostess is outside in the elevated courtyard, talking with a 
neighbor who has called on a matter of housewifely business, when we draw from 
her husband the idyl of the house-top. It comes about through our comment 
upon the circumstances that the izzar — a cumbrous and not becoming garment, 
being, as I think I have already said, merely a square sheet draped and tucked and 
banded about the figure — is worn by women of all nationalities and religions in 
most cities of Northern and Southern Syria. It is a Moslem custom, we opine, and 
marvel at the adoption of it by Christians. 

" It happened in this way, you see," is the next step to the story we have set 
our hearts upon getting. " Many, many years ago, as I told you, the Christians 
— Greeks and Roman Catholics alike — were accounted as nothing by their masters. 
I have heard my father say that in his boyhood it was not uncommon for a 
Turkish soldier, in passing a native Christian, to kick off his own slipper into the 
middle of the street, and say, ' You infidel dog ! go get my slipper and put it on 
my foot !' The Christians did not care to muffle up their women and hide their 
faces, but they were forced to do as the Moslem women did, to save their wives and 
daughters from insult when they went into the streets. So they fell into Moslem 
fashions in this and other things, and even now must wear the izzar and the 
mendeel in public." 

The little wife still chats with the neighbor, the Syrian sunshine bringing out 
the gleam of every link of the gold chain, and blazing back from the broad golden 
bands upon her wrists. She looks so prosperous and happy that the question 
follows naturally upon our glance at the fair picture: 

" How long have you been married ?' ' 

" Nine years." 

" Is it possible !" for the wife does not look to be twenty. " She must have 
been a mere child at the time?" 

"She was sixteen. But" — a half-embarrassed laugh — "I made up my 
mind that she should be my wife the first moment I set eyes on her — a girl of 
thirteen, and just home from school.** 

This is promising — and refreshing in a country where marriage is a synonym 
ibr barter and sale. 

" Ah ! love at first sight ?" 



THE FEAG OF THE ORIENT. 



219 



He looks doubtful. 

4 4 As to that, madame, we do not think so much of love here as you do in 
your country. It is more a matter of business." 

To prove the assertion he narrates how, having arrived late at night at his 
sister's house after a protracted tour with a party of English people, he had slept late, 
and awaking at noon, 
espied through the 
window a young girl 
passing back and forth 
to a well in the court- 
yard. How, after 
watching her for an 
hour or so, he had 
arisen, and breakfast- 
ed, and while at break- 
fast, asked his sister the 
name of the stranger. 

4 * This was one 
o' clock in the day. By 
six that evening my 
sister had made appli- 
cation to the girl's par- 
ents for their daughter 
in my name." 

The father insis- 
ted upon a truce of 
three months, and the 
lover waited, volun- 
tarily, six, before re- 
newing his suit. 

4 4 1 told him that 
my mind had not 
changed; that it 
would never change, 
but that if he said 4 Wait six years, ' instead of six months, six years it should 
be. I was given leave to visit at the house twice a week, and talk with her father 
and mother." 

4 4 Not with her?" 

44 Oh, for that matter, customs have altered with us since the times when a 
woman was not allowed to look at her betrothed until she was his wife. When I 




THE UTTI.E WIFE ST1XI, CHATS WITH THE NEIGHBOR.' 



THE FLAG 'OF THE ORIENT. 



221 



. ent in, she did not run out of the room, as was the rule in her mother's young 
days. I would say 1 Good evening,' and she answered ' Good evening,' when I 
went in and ' Good night ' when I went away. And now and then I pretended to 
be thirsty that I might ask her to get me a glass of water," — a little shame-faced 
at the confession. "Further than this we never spoke together. It was three 
years after I first saw her before we were married. No ! I had never seen her 
alone for one minute. I respected her too much to get her talked about. As it 
was, many thought our behavior very strange — quite a new fashion. They said it 
happened through my knowing so many Europeans. The A T edding, too, caused 
great talk. Up to that time everybody was married at night, and it was the 
custom with us Greeks for the bride to stand just inside the door to receive the 
guests and to hold out her hand for whatever money, or other present had been 
brought to her. I said: 

- ' My wife shall not play the beggar, and we will be married at noon and 
invite whoever will to come in the afternoon and wish us well, and have some 
refreshment, and then go quietly away. There will be no drinking and feasting 
and singing and dancing all night and all day, such as is the custom with others, 
for maybe two or three days together. And so it was. And many have followed 
our example. The Patriarch of Jerusalem has expressed himself as greatly in 
favor of the new order of things." 

" You served for her three years and six months, — half as long as Jacob for 
Rachel," I remark, a little mischievously, as the wife, again leaving her sandals at 
the door, comes in to stand behind her husband's chair, laying her hand upon his 
shoulder. 

" Yet you do not think so much of her as we do, you would have us believe ! 
And you told us just now, that it would be accounted shameful for a woman to 
allow herself to love a man before she is married. I call yours a love match out- 
and-out, on your part, and, I more than half suspect, on your wife's also. Don't you 
believe she had learned to love you a little in all those years of patient waiting ?' ' 

His hand steals up to that resting on his shoulder; leaning back to look in her 
face, he repeats the query in English — not Arabic — adding, merrily — " I believe 
it myself!" 

The dark, piquant face glows red as a Georgian peach; the plump hand falls 
smartly upon his cheek; the black eyes are full of confusion and laughter: 
" No ! no !" she cries, unguardedly. " Never ! never ! not one bit !" 
The hero of the idyl of the house-top flashes a triumphant glance at us: 
" Didn't I tell you she understands English, and could speak it if she would ?" 



CHAPTER XXIV. 



"THE WAILING PLACE." 




'HB deep descent down which we pick our way to the section 
of the ancient wall of the Temple known the world over 
as " The Wailing Place," is nothing more or less than an 
accumulation of rubbish hundreds of years old. Ancient 
Jerusalem lies from fifty to seventy feet below the modern 
town. 



Cm)^w vPQP We turn aside from the more direct route to the sacred 

^ spot for a look at " Robinson's Arch." The celebrated 
fragment springs boldly from the wall which enclosed the area of the Temple. 
The bridge of which it was an abutment once spanned the valley between the 
House of God and Mount Zion. The polished stone pavement below is over- 
whelmed by nearly fifty feet of earth and stones. This bridge, in the opinion of 
able commentators, was but one of several arches connecting the two hills, proba- 
bly the " ascent by which Solomon went up into the house of the Lord." 

When the eager spirits that direct and execute the work of the Palestine 
Exploration Society so far prevail with the jealous Government now in despotic 
possession of the storied precincts as to be allowed to lay bare the bosom of the 
City of the Great King, what marvels will be brought to light ! 

In discussing the subject for the twentieth time in three days, we almost 
fancy that the conscious superincumbent soil thrills and heaves beneath us with a 
sense of the importance of buried secrets. We recount wistfully the timbers and 
boards of cedar of a day when silver was in Jerusalem as stones, and cedars as 
sycamore trees for abundance; the cherubim carved out of olive wood and overlaid 
with gold; the wrought cornices and wainscoats of cherubim and palm-trees and 
open flowers; the doors decorated in like manner and overlaid with fine gold beaten 
into the underlying tracery; the three rows of hewed stone; the brass work of 
flowers, of lilies, lions, oxen, cherubim and palm-trees, knops and pomegranates, 
the marble and ivory, the ceilings of cedar, and walls of vermilion. Nebuchad- 
nezzar and his imitators in unholy demolition and robbery must have overlooked 
much in sacking Temple and palaces; the flames and Roman conquerors spared, 
because they could not destroy the wonderful stones of Herod's building. 

Day and scene are in unison with this train of thought. The alleys we have 
traversed since leaving David Street, twist in and about the Jewish quarter. The 
last twist brings the Wailing Place into view. 

(222) 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



22^ 



A blind wall lifts high above our heads the great stones we have learned to 
/ecognize as belonging to Phoenician and Jewish architecture — some twenty, some 




"THE WAITING PLACE." 

thirty feet long. They were built so ' ' compact together ' ' that but a few crevices 
give foothold to hyssop and other clinging plants; they are darkened by rain and 



224 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



drip with moisture which we fancy is unclean. Close against the base of the wall 
is ranged a row of figures — men, women and even children. Women, for the most 
part past middle age, wear bedrabbled skirts, and faded shawls drawn cowl-like 
over their heads. Nearly all hold tattered copies of the Hebrew Psalms and the 
babble of intoned reading is broken to the attentive ear by sobs. 

We know what they are saying, and, withdrawn a decent space from the 
throng, open the " International Teachers' Edition" of our " Palestine Baedeker," 
and follow the service silently. 

O God ! the heathen hath come into Thine inheritance : 

Thy holy Temple have they defiled : 

They have laid Jerusalem on heaps. 
****** 

We are become a scorn to our neighbors ; 
A scorn and derision to them that are around about us. 

How long, Lord, wilt Thou be angry forever? 

Shall Thy jealousy burn like fire? 
Pour out Thy wrath upon the heathen that have not known Thee, 
And upon the kingdoms that have not called upon Thy name : 

For they have devoured Jacob, 

And laid waste his dwelling-place. 
Oh, remember not against us former iniquities ; 

Let Thy tender mercies speedily prevent us ; 

For we are brought very low ! 

fi Very low !" we interrupt ourselves to comment. 

Among the dwellers in fallen Jerusalem, the}?- are the most degraded, and to 
human eye, the most hopeless. The Psalm they chant might have been penned 
yesterday, so graphic is the portrayal of their present estate. For eighteen centu- 
ries the cry now upon their lips has been sobbed to heaven. Well may they 
iterate: 

Wilt Thou be angry forever? 

As our ears accustom themselves to the intoned clamor, we discover that three 
or four men stationed beyond one whose long robe and furred cap proclaim his 
priestly office, are conducting with him a responsive service quite irrespective of 
the readings going on about them. A learned friend in our little party translates 
the litany made familiar to him by many hearings: 

For our temple that is destroyed, — 

chants the leader. The response follows: - 

Here sit we down lonely and weep. 



226 



THE Fly AG OF THE ORIENT. 



Then, 

For our walls which are torn down, 
(Here sit we down lonely and weep !) 
For the glory that has vanished, 
(Here sit we down lonely and weep !) 
For the goodly stones that are dust, 
(Here sit we down lonely and weep !) 

A roughly laid stone wall closes the area at one end; a door set in it is 
slightly ajar, and withdrawing still further from the mourning crowd, we push it 
back and step into a sort of courtyard w T here are several trees. Beneath a branchy 
olive a woman sits flat upon the damp earth, her forehead laid against the trunk 

of the tree. A soiled and ragged book is 
upon her knees; her hands are clasped 
below her chin, and tears roll slowly down 
her withered cheeks upon the worn pages. 
Her lips move soundlessly in prayer, or peni- 
tential Psalm. She does not notice our 
intrusion, but a young girl standing behind 
her and looking up through tears at the wall, 
starts nervously aside, turning her face away 
in timidity or distress. A baby is in her 
arms; both are wretchedly clad and look 
half-starved. The guide knows hei by sight. 

' ' She is but thirteen years old," he tells 
us, as aware that we are trespassers, we with- 
draw 7 , pulling the gate shut after us. " That 
is her grandmother, and, young as she is, 
the child is hers. Her husband left her be- 
fore the baby was born. They are very 
poor and almost friendless." 
"Are they Jews?" 

" Of course; but not natives of Jerusalem. From Poland, I think." 

Nothing in the strange scenes of the hour will linger more distinctly in our 
minds than this little episode. Compared with the unfeigned grief of the aged 
exile bemoaning her nation's fate in the one retired spot from which she could 
gaze upon the sacred stones, the loud lamentings of the line ranged against the 
wall, seem artificial and ostentatious. 

' ' A periodical parade of mawkish sentimentality ! ' ' say strident accents at our 
elbow. ' ' At the best, the whole business is the outcome of custom and supersti- 
tion and unworthy of respect. Is it reasonable ? — I go further — is it possible ? — 




IN THE JEWISH OUARTKR, 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 22 7 

to believe that these people come here every Friday ready to shed tears of genuine 
distress over a story almost two thousand years old ? It is all done for effect — 
pumped up to order. If nobody ever came to look at the show, and travelers 
never wrote up ' The Wailing Place,' the exhibition would go out of fashion inside 
of five years." 

Dr. L- Zwinglius Sharpe is, of course, the speaker. He is robed in a mackin- 
tosh which owes something of its exceeding glossiness to the Scotch mist thicken- 
ing in the valley. His wife's gray cloak and hat have a conventual touch; her 
placid face might be that of a Dutch Madonna. 

' 1 We have seen nothing finer, more elevating than this, my love, ' ' she sighs 
blissfully. " Everything harmonizes so consistently! The hoary old walls, the 
bright colors of the women's shawls toned down by the wet — the solemn sound of 
the chanting — and oh, Doctor dear ! will you look at the delicious dull olive of 
those old velveteen coats ? And that woman, over there sitting on the stones — 
the one in white, who is looking this way — doesnH she remind you of 4 By the 
rivers of Babylon we sat down ?' " 

From the rising ground about a stone's cast from the " Wailing Place," we 
glance back. The crowd is thinning, and we cannot avoid seeing that some of 
those who mourned most volubly are most brisk or indifferent by the time they 
reach us. There is no difference in the aspect of those who were but now appar- 
ently plunged into the depths of hopeless sorrow and others of the race who are. 
buying and selling at the stalls in the Jewish quarter. 

' ' Is Dr. Sharpe right for once ?" 

While we say it, the grandmother and the child-wife we surprised at their 
devotions, come slowly up the narrow way. The baby has fallen asleep upon the 
mother's shoulder. The load is heavy for the little creature, and stopping to get 
her breath half way up the hill, she turns for a last look at the grim wall below. 
Tears well afresh into her eyes, and again she averts her face, as if ashamed of 
the weakness. The old woman has drawn her dingy shawl over her book; trudging 
weakly onward, she keeps her regards fixed upon the ground; the sadness of a 
long-frustrated desire is in the drooping lines of the wrinkled face. She is not 
artistically ' ' harmonious, ' ' but we believe her to be the type of a class. Her 
figure and visage come between us and the page upon which we read, when we 
shed our damp wraps and sit down before a glowing fire in our hotel quarters: 

The Lord was as our enemy : 

He hath swallowed up Israel : 

He hath swallowed up all her palaces : 

He hath destroyed his stronghold. 

And hath increased in the daughter of Judah mourning and lamentation. 



CHAPTER XXV. 



A ROUND OF VISITS. 

AVING stipulated that our visits on this afternoon shall be confined to 
respectable people whose worldly circumstances are moderately good, 
I demur when Mrs. Jamal, holding up the hem of her clean white 
izzar, leaves 1 a narrow dirty street for a cross-alley, narrower and 
dirtier yet. 

When I say that a Syrian street is dirty, I seek to convey a depth of meaning 
hard to be received into the imagination of the dweller in Western cities. This 
particular alley is positively noisome. Refuse of the most objectionable descrip- 
tion rots and reeks in corners and close to the walls. The least unsafe footing is 
in the middle of the street. The houses stand close together, are from two to 
three stories high, of stone, and badly lighted. Most of them have but a single 
window in each room; some have none, the door admitting all the light and air 
that find their way to the murky interior. 

All the children who can walk alone are in the street. In commenting upon 
•the circumstance, I check the censure upon my lips. Ailie Dinmont retorted, 
"when her husband complained to a visitor that she " would aye give the bairnies 
their ain way," " It's little else I have to give them — puir things !" And the 
uncombed, unwashed, black-eyed elves, strolling and scampering in what is no 
better than a filthy gutter, would seem to have preciously little except their own 
wild will to make life endurable. 

Six or eight troop at our heels as we mount to the third story of a building 
no better and no worse than its neighbors. 

' ' I will take you first to see the people who own the house — people who are 
well-off, almost rich, for this part of the world," my conductress flings back to 
me over her shoulder, her pleasant eyes sparkling with fun. 

I see the meaning of her arch look the next minute. We have climbed the 
stairway, built, as are all in the neighborhood, upon the outside of the house, and 
slippery with mud, and pause at an open door while my guide asks leave to enter. 
Two-thirds of the one-room constituting the " home " is raised by two steps from 
the rest, the door opening at the side of the lower portion. Near the edge of the 
upper step a woman is slicing carrots into a big metal bowl — copper or brass, but 
black as iron. Her legs are doubled under her; the floor is covered w r ith dirty 
matting, and she sits flat upon it. She wears a dingy cotton skirt and a wadded 

(228) 




THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



jacket; upon her head is an equally dingy mendeel. A brazier of charcoal is not 
far off, over which the meal she is preparing will presently be cooked; a divan, 
cushioned with Turkey red cotton, runs around two sides of the apartment; in a 
recess is a pile of quilts and rugs for bedding. Under the divan are a water jar 
and an oil-jug, with three earthenware bowls of various sizes, also a coffee-pot and 
half-a-dozen cups. There is 
not another stick of furniture; 
not another utensil is to be 
seen. 

Without rising, the host- 
ess says in Arabic that we are 
welcome, and motions us to 
seat ourselves upon the divan, 
going on with her work, plac- 
idly ignorant of any deficiencies 
in her garb or surroundings. 
The children crowd together 
at the bottom of the room, 
staring stolidly at us; an older 
woman than the mistress of 
the establishment seats herself 
upon the matting, reaches out 
an arm to grab the solitary 
garment of an eighteen-month- 
old creeping dangerously near 
the steps, and when he screams 
and slaps her, smiles listlessly. 
From her appearance I should 
take her to be sixty years of 
age, and am amazed at discov- 
ering that the baby-boy is hers 
and not yet weaned. She was 
the sixth wife — and is now the widow — of a Moslem who could afford to please 
himself in the matter of a plurality of partners. Three were divorced, and 
two died while he was alive. Three of the children we now see belong to the 
widow by right of birth; her step-sons and daughters are married. Her jointure 
as her lord's only legal relict enables her to live independently of them, I am 
informed. The deceased was in easy circumstances. 

The widow's idea of independent ease is to dwell as a boarder with the gain- 
loving proprietors of the three-story tenement. She and her children, the man 




STIRRING AND NOTABLE HOUSEWIFE. 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



of the house, his wife and two children, eat and sleep in this room. Upon hearing 
it I gasped. The place may be fifteen feet square. It is certainly not larger than 
this computation would make it. There is but one window, and that is set high 
up in the thick stone walls. A pair of pet pigeons are tip-toeing about the door, 
pecking at crumbs; there is even a dog upon the threshold, albeit he is an 
accursed animal among the Moslems. At night-fall the door will close all these 
creatures in, and the window remain shut for fear of the damp draughts. The 
floor will be covered with quilts, and eight human beings lie down to sleep in the 
clothes they have worn by day. 

' ' Yet you tell me these are not of the poorest class ? that hundreds of others 
live in the same way without losing respectability ?" I inquire. 

My interpreter raises her eye-brows, and makes a gesture that would be 
impatient were it not courteous. 

" I do tell you that they consider themselves comfortable. They have houses 
and money. They want nothing. And are proud — so very proud that did they 
know that we are here to see how they live, we would not be let inside of that 
door. I have told them that you are my English teacher — ' ' and at my look of 
surprise, she adds, gracefully, " Indeed, madam ! it is I who have learned much 
—ah, so much from you ! I know these people. They have good characters and 
kind hearts. They are not of my religion, but I respect them. You wished to 
see the ways of the country, and you are seeing them." 

This is uttered low and rapidly, with the impassive countenance we train 
ourselves to assume when upon such errands. But for the speaker's womanly wit 
and tact, I could not gain access to what I especially wished to inspect, the homes 
of the great middle-class of Syrians. I bow to the unintentional rebuke conveyed 
in her protest. If ' ' these people ' ' choose to sit cross-legged and eat and sleep 
upon the floor, it is surely their affair and not mine. My prejudices in favor of 
carpets, mattresses, tables and table-cloths, knives, forks and bath-tubs, would 
seem as outlandish to them as their peculiarities appear to me, while as to their 
*' pride " — the wife of an American freeholder would resent yet more indignantly 
the intrusion upon her domestic life of a Jerusalem reporter — if there be such a 
thing. 

I copy carefully Mrs. Jamal's deportment, as she takes leave of our enter- 
tainers, after ten minutes' chat in Arabic. I even utter after her the one Arabic 
phrase I have learned, " Mar Salaami /" in withdrawing our feet from the door. 

Visit No. 2 has livelier elements in it. In point of worldly circumstance the 
families represented in the group to which I am introduced are apparently superior 
to the people I set down as " No. i." The room, approached, as before, by an 
outer stone stairway, is larger than that we have just left, but looks smaller for 
having an iron bedstead, draped with mosquito netting, and a veritable bureau, in 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



231 



it. A plump cushion, covered with Turkey-red, is laid upon the floor across two 
sides of the room, close to the wall. Upon it sit, cross-legged, the grandmother 
of the household, sewing upon a man's shirt, and a Nubian woman, as black as 
charcoal. A deep brand upon the left cheek shows that she was once a slave. 
Although manumitted by law some years ago, many African slaves have elected 
to remain with their former owners. This is evidently one of the family. While 
her mistress plies the needle, the negress folds her arms upon her stomach and leans 
lazily against the wall, a grin upon her face, and more curiosity in her rolling 
eye-balls than I have ever 
seen evinced by a native 

Syrian of either sex. Chairs r ~~" _ , 

are set for us by a young 
woman who enters hastily 
behind us. She is intro- 
duced as a married daugh- 
ter of the old woman. Her 
room is upon another floor 
of the house, and this is 
virtually but one family. 

The invariable brazier 
is in the middle of the mat- 
ted floor, and the unavoid- 
able coffee steams upon it. 
We have talked of the 
weather and the chances 
of more rain for five min- 
utes before the coffee is 
poured into tiny, handleless 
cups by a representative of 
the third generation, a girl 
of fourteen who is to be 

married in a couple of weeks. She trips around the circle in stockinged feet, 
having left her sandals at the door; her calico gown, belted about a full waist, is 
clean, and very much like what a New England farmer's daughter would wear while 
doing the morning's housework. Her brown wrists are banded with gold and 
silver bangles, eight or ten upon each arm; she looks really animated as, in taking 
the cup from her hand, I wish for her, through our interpreter, many years of 
happiness in her new life. The spirit of enterprise exemplified in bed, bureau and 
chairs, gives tone to the household. A breeze from the world outside of harem 
windows has stolen in here through some unguarded crevice. The talk has 




WHEN HE HAD OFFERED ISAAC, HIS SON." 



232 



THE FIAG OF THE ORIENT. 



briskness and almost sprightliness in it. The coffee is thick after the manner 
of all Turkish coffee; it is, moreover, made excessively sweet out of compliment 
to the foreign guest, and a liberal pinch of allspice is added to it. A decoction 
of wormwood would be more palatable to one of the victims, but the alternative 
being to take one of the cigarettes assuming form in the supple fingers of the 
daughter, the draught is committed to an amiable, and just now oft- abused, 
stomach. 

The cigarette- maker has deposited her 3'earling baby upon the floor, and, 
with a bowl of tobacco upon her lap and a pile of papers upon one knee, wets 
forefinger and thumb in her mouth before beginning each fresh roll. Her mother 
lays by her sewing; the Nubian loosens her lazy bones to accept a cigarette; the 
bride-expectant puffs as fast as the rest, and the baby does not cough when the 
room is soon blue with smoke. The top of the bureau is ornamented with three 
tripods of black wood inlaid with mother-of-pearl, all standing upside down. One 
is placed in front of me, and several cigarettes and a box of matches are laid in 
seductive array upon it. Should I change my mind, overcome by the temptation, 
I need not be mortified by the necessity of asking for the luxury. 

The cigarette is always offered to me, and, I need not say, never accepted. 
My reputation for taste and good manners must suffer in the minds of the specta- 
tors, but they refrain from criticism, spoken or looked. 

Coffee is made every Iiour in this room, and cigarettes are rolled by one or 
other of the women all day long. They do literally nothing between meals, but 
sip and smoke and — as a pasha's wife told a visitor of her own method of passing 
the time — "just sit." The grandmother is a notable and stirring house- wife in 
that she knows how to sew, and occasionally makes a garment for her soldier-son. 
She is further distinguished among her neighbors by preferring to sleep in a bed 
rather than on a quilt upon the floor. 

The greeting bestowed upon Mrs. Jama! is cordial to affectionateness. She 
explains it aside, presently, the baby's screaming demand to be taken up and fed 
absorbing the attention of the others. 

' ' You see I run in once in a while, and tell them stories. They are only 
children — nothing more — and will listen for hours to tales of Abraham, Isaac, 
Jacob, Joseph, Samuel, and all that, you know. I give them only Bible stories, 
but that they never suspect. Not that they would care, but the men object to 
having their wives and daughters taught the Christian religion. They say it 
makes them too independent. So, I must slip in the good I would do them — 
poor souls !" 

A quick footstep sounds upon the stone stair. The women of three genera- 
tions arise to greet the stalwart young fellow in uniform who appears in the door- 
way. One after another, they kiss his hands; his aged mother hastens to set the 



THE Fly AG OF THE ORIENT. 



233 



©ne unoccupied chair for him; the young niece serves him with coffee, his sister 
supplies him with a cigarette and lights it for him. He is not ill-looking, and his 
behavior is ' ' quite the thing, ' ' according to his lights and those of his kinspeople. 
He has nodded to us, receiving without a word the attentions paid to him by his 
assiduous servitors, and when we exchange ' ' Mar Salaamis ' ' with the rest of the 
party and are urged to repeat the call, we leave him seated, his long legs stretched 




COURTYARD OF A HOME IN NAZARETH. 



half-way across the room, the cigarette between his lips, his handsome eyes fixed 
upon the ceiling. 

No. 3 of this one of our ' ' afternoons out ' ' is paid to a young matron who 
would be comely were she less slatternly and plumper. Her room is without a 
window, and if the sun did not shine out brightly for the quarter-hour of our 
stay, we should not be able to see from one wall to another of the gloomy 
confines. 

My guide knits her brows disapprovingly and sighs in entering. Her second 
remark to the hostess is a protest. A cradle is drawn near the door that the light 
may fall upon a weazen-faced baby, sitting upright in it. His eyes are startringly 



234 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



large and dark in the smal 1 visage ; the fingers eagerly outstretched to the bowl 
in the mother's hand, are like the claws of a bird. He is too hungry to notice 
the strangers, yet Mrs. Jamal intercepts the vessel. 

' ' You are not going to give him this ! ' ' 

She shows it to me. 

' ' Curdled ! " I say. ' ' We call it ' loppered milk ! ' " 

" It is lebben, and old lebben at that, sour like vinegar and mouldy, and not 
too clean. Child ! child ! " turning to the mother, ''don't you know that babies 
should have sweet milk? the freshest you can get? Goat's milk, if you cannot 
get cow's?" And again to me and despairingly — " What can be expected of a 
mother who is hardly more than a baby herself? She is but fourteen now." 

The girl- wife laughs childishly and good-humoredly, and proceeds to hold 
the nauseous-looking mess to the greedy lips. 

"He eats it every day. He eats nothing else," she says carelessly. 

M He looks like it ! " retorts the visitor. "Ah, madame, it is cases such as 
this that make the heart ache. I have known this girl since she was six years 
old. She was married at twelve. She cannot cook, she cannot sew ; her baby's 
clothes must be made by somebody else, and you see what a place this is for a 
husband to come to at night. I would teach her if I could, but they never learn 
anything after they are married. ' ' 

The mother looks around at the earnest tone, and laughs again, comprehend- 
ing nothing except that her friend is troubled, and about her, and profoundly in- 
different to censure as to praise. The chamber is as ill-furiiished as her mind. 
No " Franji" innovations, in the shape of beds with legs to support them, seats 
to match, and chests of drawers, have perverted Syrian simplicity here. A roll 
of dirty bedding in one corner, a brazier of hot ashes, the coffee-pot simmering 
upon it, a big bowl, the cushioned bench against the wall, and the cradle, make 
up the list of household goods and chattels. The odor of unwashen humanity ; 
of past cookery, in which onions took an active part, and of stale tobacco-smoke, 
blend queerly and powerfully with the pungent fumes of the boiling coffee. 
Seasoned as I have thought myself to be by now to assaults upon the olfactory 
organs, I am thankful to be allowed to retreat to the outer air. My companion 
lingers a moment longer to explain that we have not time to accept the coffee the 
good-natured hostess would press upon us, and to offer a few more words of neigh- 
borly counsel. 

"Not that it will do any good," continues the mentor in rejoining me. 
" But I cannot help liking the poor child. She is of such a good disposition and 
loves her baby. Her husband is much older than she and has steady work, and 
would be kind to a woman who made his home comfortable. I try to make her 
understand this, and to encourage her to keep things clean and learn to sew and 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



235 



cook his food well. As you have seen, she but laughs. She ran wild upon the 
street until she was married, just as those girls are doing now " — directing my 
notice to a knot of children scrambling over a broken wall at the bottom of the 
street, chattering and shrieking like so many parrots. 4 ' What can mothers ex- 
pect who let their daughters grow up so, but that they will have homes and babies 
like those you saw just now ? ' ' 

She is so much absorbed in the subject, and so intent upon shielding her 
white izzar from the 
pollution of pavement 
and wall, that she 
does not at once hear 
a soft call from the 
landing of a flight of 
steps bulging over the 
street. 

The summons is 
repeated, and we look 
up to see a woman 
beckoning importu- 
nately. She pulls her 
mendeel forward over 
her face and runs down 
to meet us, when we 
begin the ascent of the 
stairway. 

"She will have it 
that we must come to 
see her," smiles the 
interpreter, introdu- 
cing me in dumb 
show. 

My new acquaint- 
ance unveils her face 
when we are within 
her door, kisses my hand and Mrs. Jamal's cheeks, and begs us to be seated 
upon the divan. It is covered, I note immediately, first with the conventional 
Turkey-red, and over this with clean, white muslin, a sort of "scrim," such as 
is used for window-curtains. An iron bedstead fills up one corner of the room, 
curtained with the same material as the divan-cover ; a neat chest of drawers is 
in the opposite corner, and a tray set upon this holds cups, saucers, tumblers 




SHE RAN WILD UPON THE STREET. 



236 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



and plates. A cupboard is let into the wall ; a baby is creeping over the floor. 
Mrs. Jamal picks it up and kisses a face that is positively clean and almost 
chubb}^. 

"The youngest of four ! " she interjects, between caresses and pet-names. 
" The mother was married at ten. Her first was born at fourteen. She is nearly 
twenty now. From eight until ten, she was in my school. She reads and is 
handy with the needle. And we have always been dear friends. Ah ! ' ' nodding, 
and smiling to the pleased mother — " I am very proud of my scholar ! " 

We have been seen from other doorways. Mrs. Jamal still cuddles the baby 
when two more women enter ; one leads a child ; her companion carries another 
in her arms. Salutations and introductions over, the mother of the toddler pre- 
fers a request. A piece of dark blue cloth is thrown over her shoulder, just pur- 
chased for her by her husband, and she would like to make a jacket out of it for 
herself. With frank disregard of conventionality, or what we account conven- 
tional usages, Mrs. Jamal lays by her izzar, spreads the cloth upon the matted 
floor, kneels down beside it, measures and chalks a pattern upon it with work- 
manlike skill, and cuts out the garment as swiftly and well as if she were a 
trained tailoress. The women follow every movement with keen interest, and I 
am almost as much engrossed. 

It is doubtful if my conductress has ever heard of " zenana missions," 
under that name. She would be surprised were I to dub her ' ' a home-and- 
foreign-missionary. " She is merely a Christian woman, dwelling among her own 
people ; a housekeeper, wife and mother, happy in her home, and longing to 
make other homes as happy as hers. 

I have already learned to distinguish Christian women from Moslem wherever 
I see them, and silently conclude (correctly, as I learn presently) that the bearer 
of the bab} T belongs to the Greek Church. It is not an expression of superior 
intelligence alone that characterizes the Christians, but a general alertness of 
bearing and pla}^ of countenance, a sort of self-respectfulness, if I may thus 
phrase it. " This woman has a soul of her very own," it seems to say. " She 
thinks, feels, hopes and lives her own life to some extent. Knowing herself to 
be immortal and more accountable to God than to her husband for word and 
action, she is lifted above the beasts that perish. " 

It is rare to find a Moslem woman of twenty who can read or write. It is 
rarer to meet with a Christian woman of any age among the respectable middle 
classes who cannot. A teacher in a mission school told me 3 r esterday that a 
wealthy Moslem, yielding to his daughters' importunities to be sent to school — 
education of some kind being just now a "fashionable fad" in their circle — 
brought them to the English lady in person, and asked that they might be in- 
structed in needlework and music and even taught to read. 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



237 



" But not to write ! " he stipulated. " Women who can write will bring dis- 
grace upon their families by sending love-letters to men who are not chosen by 
their parents to be their husbands. It is never safe. ' ' 

Let me remark, furthermore, while my guide kneels on the floor, the shining 
shears moving as briskly as her kindly tongue — that jealous dread of the en- 
croachments of the Christian religion is on the increase, not decline, among 
Mohammedan men. Mrs. Jamal conveyed the secret of this distrust in saying 



•that they fear religion will 
make wives and daughters 
independent. Dr. Sand- 
reczky, whose Children's 
Hospital is one of the no- 
blest monuments to Chris- 
tian enterprise in Jerusa- 
lem, and to whose courtesy 
and professional skill for- 
eign residents and visitors 
alike bear grateful testi- 
mony, once said the same 
thing in effect to me : 

" In the Moslem's opin- 
ion, the most mischievous 
idea that could get pos- 
session of the mind of his 
wife or daughter, would be 
belief in the equality of 
sexes. Whatever tends to 
overthrow the tenet of mas- 
culine — that is, patriarchal 
— sovereignty, is a direct 




blow at the Mohammedan howday street scene in jerusaeem. 

religion. The woman who suspects her own individuality is dangerous.'" 

Here is the key-note to what makes mission work among the followers of the 
Prophet especially difficult and discouraging. It is not uncommon for an 
English or American visitor to a harem, small or large, to be warned not to 
speak of Christ or his religion to the women, and frequent calls from the pale- 
faces would excite a degree of suspicion which would lead to exclusion. It 
follows, as a necessity, that the good done to the creatures who minister to 
the needs and pleasures of the superior sex, must be wrought tactfully and 
[gradually. 



THE FEA.G OF THE ORIENT. 



2 39 



" I am no more in my husband's sight than his donkey ! " said a sad-eyed 
woman to an American woman who had been an angel of mercy to the miserable 
household. " Not so much, for he beats the donkey less." 

In our homeward walk, I say something of this to my companion. She 
shakes her head mournfully : 

' ' You see but a little. If you were to live among them year after year, you 
would be very sad. I do what I can to lighten the load of my small world. But 
what is that among so many ? ' ' 

Three times a week she collects in her neat sitting-room from fourteen to 
eighteen native girls, and teaches them to do plain sewing, embroidery, knitting 
and mending, giving her house and her time without charge. The girls take 
turns in cooking a luncheon served at noon, washing up the dishes and setting 
things in order when the meal is over. In the spring, she leads them into the 
country to gather the wild flowers that glorify the hills and fields for a few weeks. 
These are carefully pressed, and, under her eye, arranged upon cards inscribed, 
" Flowers from the Holy L,and," and sold during the tourists' season as souvenirs 
of the visit. The sales of these and other articles do not meet the expenses of 
materials and food, unless the number of visitors be unusually large. In an ordi- 
nary season, the class is kept up at a loss. What afflicts the instructress most is 
that she must refuse many applications from girls who wish to become pupils, 
would-be recruits from the ranks of the empty-handed and empty-minded, whom 
the busy philanthropist pities from the depths of her generous heart. 

Mrs. Jamal's modesty would shrink from the title of philanthropist. She is 
simply living her life conscientiously, in the fear of God, and in lcve for her 
neighbor in the sphere to which she has been called. Yei I can answer for her 
gratitude should the proposition made by me in a former "Talk " — that some of 
the 4 ' Circles ' ' in the far land in which women are surely more highly favored by 
Heaven than in any other, would send monthly a few dollars for this quiet, prac- 
tical work — be taken up in active earnest. Twenty -five dollars per month would 
enable the teacher to enlarge her class and increase the usefulness of what she has 
undertaken. 

She can labor successfully where foreigners may not enter, and, being one of 
themselves, can brighten and better her country-women's lot as it now is, while 
gradually raising tlrem to desire and appreciate higher things. ' , 



CHAPTER XXVI. 



IN A PALANKEEN TO JERICHO. 

OHB romantic reader of Oriental fable and travel conjures up at the word 
" Palankeen, ' ' a vision of luxury which will be dashed by a description 
of the conveyance as it is brought up to the hotel door on this fine frosty 
December morning. It is not a curtained litter, piled with silken 
cushions, borne upon men's shoulders; neither is it a sedan chair swung between 
gilded poles. A stout wooden box, open in front, and half-way to the back on the 
sides, is fitted upon two pairs of shafts, one behind, one in front. A glass window, 
working upon hinges, is let into each side, and over these hang red curtains. A 
bench fastened into the rear end of the interior is cushioned with red stuff; a mat 
lies on the foot. 

At first sight the vehicle strikes one as clumsy, unwieldly and grotesquely 
ugly. A mule is harnessed within each pair of shafts; rugs, a railway pillow and 
my satchel are bestowed within, and I mount to my carriage by means of a step- 
ladder, held firm by David himself. I was inclined to laugh when this feature of 
Oriental magnificence was first submitted for my approval, but in previous journeys 
to that upon which we are now bound, I have learned to appreciate the shelter and 
comfort it affords, and respite from the saddle when one is weary, or not well, is 
grateful in the extreme. Packed in among downy cushions, swathed in furs and 
soft woolens, with abundance of room for limbs that tire of one position in the 
long marches, I do not begrudge Mrs. Lofty her carriage and high prancing pair, 
as the muleteer gives the word and the little caravan sets forward through the 
Jaffa gate. Some women have complained to me that the swing of a palankeen 
made them slightly sea-sick for a few hours. Although a wretched sailor upon the 
water, I have never known the slightest nausea in this ungainly equipage. The 
motion is precisely what one feels in the saddle on the back of a fairly well-gaited 
horse. It is not as smooth as that of a carriage built over elastic springs, but the 
comparative roughness has ample compensation in the roominess of the interior 
and opportunity for change of position when one is cramped by sitting. 

We were once jocosely critical over the quantity of timber in the body and 
shafts of my "coach." Experience has proved the need of stanchness and 
solidity; nevertheless, as we jog along the first familiar stages of our route, I fall 
to musing upon what manner of conveyance I would have constructed in America, 
and presented to my faithful dragoman, had I the means to compass this end. It 

(240) 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



241 



should be light and strong, weather- tight, and upheld by such springs as only 
American carriage builders know how to make, and be gratefully dedicated to the 
use of American women tourists. 

A halt is called, and I arouse myself to inquire why. David, gorgeous in 
professional gear, rides to my side to prefer the petition of a native photographer 

to "take" the palan- 
keen and the escort. 
The picture herewith 
presented gives so 
correct an impression 
of the procession and 
the place — a stone- 
strewn olive-orchard 
on the lowest slope 
of Olivet — that I com- 
mend a study of the 
novel scene to the cu- 
rious and interested. 
The camp and camp 
appointments have 
gone forward, leaving 
to me as attendants, 
Serkeese, grinning 
from the top of the 
swathed luncheon- 
tent and hampers; the 
two muleteers; Al- 
cides, upon Massoud, 
and disguised in 
hunting shirt, fez 
and kafeyah, and 
David Jamal upon 
the lepers' husky cry. Dervish. The fore- 

most posts of the palankeen are wreathed with leaves and flowers in honor of 
our " fresh start." 

" Now," calls out Alcides from the van, as we are released from the glaring 
eye of the camera, " We can all go to — Jericho !" 

4< Quite so, sir !" replies the only hearer besides myself who comprehends an 
English sentence, a grave response that may or may not signify familiarity with 
American slang. 
16 





(242) 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



243 



For our destination is Jericho, and we are to be absent from our headquarters 
in Jerusalem for some days. We pass Gethsemane, dispensing a few coins to still 
the husky shrillness of the lepers' cry; skirt the Mount of Olives, and, diverging, 
to the right, fall into line upon the Bethany road, a.n excellent thoroughfare for 
several miles — almost half-way to Jericho. After we have left the mean hamlet 

of Bethany behind 
us, we begin the de- 
scent between hills 
that grew more and 
more barren, as we 
go on. The olive 
is the only tree to 
be seen, and the 
groves of this be- 
come rarer and 
smaller. At the 
juncture of the 
Bethany highway 
with a compara- 
tively disused track 
leading to Beth- 
phage, waits a 
mounted and digni- 
fied figure — the 
sheik who is to be 
our safe conduct as 
we go " down from 
Jerusalem to Jeri- 
cho." He and 
David ride together; 
Alcides falls back 
to the side of my 
palankeen; Ser- 

keese trots on ahead with his queer looking load. It is a taciturn company 
when we are bound upon an all-day expedition. The road winds down into 
a tortuous valley, at the head of which David reins up his horse and waits 
our approach. A small, half-ruined khan planted upon the edge of the way has 
a reason for being in a well opposite to it, and lower by twenty feet or thereabouts. 
Both are very old, the situation of a khan usually remaining the same for count- 
less generations, particularly when it is in the vicinity of a spring of living water. 




SHEPHERD AND WIFE. 



"THE FOUNTAIN OF THE APOSTLES. 

(244) 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



245 



Some one at the hotel spoke of this well last night as probably En-shemesh, one 
of the division lines between J udah and Benjamin. 

" The waters of En-shemtsh, and the goings ont thereof, were as Enrogel." 
("The Fuller's Fountain," - ! jads the margin.) "And the border went up by 
the valley of the son of Himiom unto the south side of the Jebusite; the same is 
Jerusalem." 

Our guide has a more interesting story of the waters: 

" Called 'The Apostles' Fountain,' because of the tradition that Christ our 
I^ord, on His last journey to Jerusalem, rested here while telling His disciples that 




RUINS OF ROMAN WATCH-TOWER. 



He was going up to be betrayed and crucified. He was on His way from Jericho, 
you see, and not yet come to Bethphage, near the Mount of Olives. It is only a 
tradition — but it might have been." 

" It might have been," for the ruined wall and part of a roof of the ancient 
caravanserai are distinctly Roman, and the spring is perennial. What more 
natural than that the ' ' taking of the twelve disciples apart in the wa}^ ' ' may have 
been at the foot of the ascent upon the summit of which He was to meet the ' ' great 
multitudes ' ' and their shouts of ' ' Hosanna to the Son of David ! Blessed is He 
that cometh in the name of the Lord ! ' ' 

Be this as it may, this was the route by which He came up from Jericho 



246 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



where He had dined with Zaccheus, and in departing from which He had made the 
blind Bartimeus to see. 

All signs of human habitation fail us as we proceed. High hills line the 
highway, ridged by natural terraces, treeless, and at this time of the year, sere to 
the summits. The heights, with their naked ledges, .remind us of nothing more 
forcibly than of gigantic skeletons from which the flesh has wasted and dropped 
away. The silence is profound and awful. The clink of the horses' iron hoofs 
upon the rock-bedded road and the harsh call of the muleteers to the patient beasts 
are all that we hear for miles together. Another — and a credible — tradition is 
committed to us in a defile, an hour's journey beyond the Apostles' Fountain. 
Hereabouts, it is believed, Shimei came out from Bahurim, "and as David and 
his men went by the way,. Shimei went along on the hill's side over against him, 
and cursed as he went, and threw stones at him and cast dust." 

As we read the tale, imagination is quick with the picture of the royal father's 
flight between the hills, and there is cordial, although may be, unholy sympathy 
expressed with rude Abishai' s outbreak : ' ' Why should this dead dog curse my 
lord the king? Let me go over, I pray thee, and take off his head !" We can 
almost see the foul-tongued son of Gera — whose behavior, after the king's restora- 
tion was a convincing proof that the bully is always the coward, — leaping from 
one to another projection of the hillside, to hurl down missiles upon the fugitives 
who "came weary and refreshed themselves there." 

On, on we ride, between sad and silent heights, over waterless ravines, whose 
pebbly beds will be washed and tossed by turbulent floods after the spring rains. 
The glare of the white rocks is now and then relieved by curious pink strata, 
sometimes deepening into rose-color. At long intervals, we see high up on the 
breast of the mountain mingled flocks of sheep and goats, feeding together, while 
the shepherd, wrapped in his brown-and- white mantle, stands or sits near. Here, 
we observe for the first time, an illustration of the division of the mixed herd prophe- 
sied by our Lord, and to which our attention was once called by Dr. Webster, the 
devoted missionary of Haifa. A shepherd, walking before the flocks, a sickly 
lamb tucked away close to his warm body inside of his thick garment, called them, 
as he went, in a peculiar note, plaintive, 3-et penetrating, which we could hear 
plainly half a mile awa3'. The sheep followed him in a long steady- line, — the 
black goats straggled hither and yon, cropping the herbage, running races, 
scampering up rocks at the left and right, until we wonder how he could ever 
collect and finally get them safely to the fold. 

" And when he putteth forth his own sheep, he goeth before them, and the 
sheep follow him; for they know his voice." 

Alcides spurs up a hillside to have audience with a shepherd, whose garment 
of goat's hair is wrapped about him as gracefully as ever Roman senator wore 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



2 47 



toga, and gallops back in proud possession of a veritable pastoral pipe. The 
sounds evoked from it by the new owner are weak and shrill, yet * ■ carry ' ' well in 
the still air. 

' 'Do you suppose that the boy-shepherd of Bethlehem played psalm- tunes 
upon a machine like this ?' ' winds up the performance. ' ' One could get better 
music out of a penny whistle. ' ' 

The classic instrument is about eight inches in length and consists of two 

reeds, each pierced on 
one side with six 
breathing holes. They 
are fastened longitu- 
dinally together with 
resin, and into the up- 
per end are fitted two 
movable mouth- 
pieces, attached to the 
pipe by a twine string. 
It is a primitive affair, 
but looks as if it might 
have capabilities — in 
the right hands. 

Noon is near when 
we espy the Hathrur 
Khan, or the Khan of 
the Good Samaritan. 

^ , JL 3* JflB Having always sup- 

posed the story of the 
man who fell among 
thieves upon this road 
\ to be merely a parable 
■3flBMBBI re ^ ate( i with a specific 
|H purpose, we are sur- 
~ ~ ' prised to learn that it 

"THE SHEIK MOUNTS GUARD WITHOUT." . , . , , , , 

is here considered that 

ourEord made use of a real incident, as historic as the fall of the Tower of Siloam, 
in answering the lawyer's question — "Who is my neighbor?" The Jericho 
road has been for twenty centuries the haunt of banditti. Even yet, peaceable 
husbandmen conveying crops to the Jerusalem market, or returning with the 
proceeds of their merchandise, are often set upon by watchful predatory tribes, 
and robbed. It is certain that the site of this wayside khan is very old, and that 




248 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



it has borne for hundreds of years the name of ' ' him who showed mercy ' ' to 
a feudal foe. It is almost certain that our Lord, journeying, as usual on foot with 
His disciples, stayed His progress to the city, where He was to offer the last and 
Greatest Sacrifice for sinning humanity, and rested here, perhaps for the mid-day 
meal, as we are now doing. 

The khan is a big shed, with a courtyard at the back, as new as it is uncomely, 
but the foundations are ancient. Upon an overlooking hill are the ruins of a 
Roman watch-tower from which is an extensive view of the defiles of approach in 
all directions. 

Palankeen and mules are left without; human beings lunch in the vast, bare 
chamber, open at the back toward the courtyard in which the horses are tethered. 
David hovers about us to be sure that we are comfortable; the sheik mounts guard 
without, perched in a niche of the archway, cigarette between his fingers, his eyes 
closed in meditation or slumber. The hum of conversation from another party of 
tourists and the chatter of the muleteers in the road, disperse thinly into the vast 
silences that encompass us in what is, for all we can see or hear, desolation without 
an inhabitant. 




CHAPTER XXVII. 



STILL ON THE JERICHO ROAD. 

BEYOND the Khan Hathrur, the road from Jerusalem to Jericho grows 
more difficult until narrowing, almost without warning, into a bridle- 
path, it ends the speculations in which we have indulged as to the 
possibility of going by carriage all the way to the Jordan. So rough 
and straight is it that more than once I insist upon alighting and walking 
around a sharp spur where the track is a narrow ledge overhanging a precipice, 
or the hill we are to descend seems, to my apprehension, to have more incline than 
the side of a house. 

The brooding silence is oppressive to ear and spirit. Alcides avers gloomily 
that the ' * best Baedeker for Palestine ' ' opens of itself at Jeremiah whenever we 
would consult it. Even a cluster of black tents would be ' * comely ' ' to eyes 
wearied by the illimitable stretch of treeless mountains, but we see none. Follow- 
ing the example of their robber ancestry, the Bedouins burrow in ravine and 
" wady," and natural dens and caves of the earth. The shepherds far up the 
heights, a few men on foot and still fewer upon donkeys are all the fellow-creatures 
we see until, in the dreariest part of the route, a defile so deep that the sun never 
visits it in winter except at noon, a woman rides briskly past. Being portly of 
figure, she is no inconsiderable load for her donkey, and parcels of divers patterns 
and weights are strapped to her saddle, but she goes by our party at a smart amble 
and is soon lost behind the bulging shoulder of a hill. Two men, similarly 
mounted, and a pack-donkey hardly visible under his load of baskets and sacks, 
follow her. 

" An enterprising lady," the guide says, admiringly. "She and her brother 
keeo the hotel at Jericho. And keep it well. She has been to Jerusalem for 
supplies. ' ' 

The incident is incongruous with the stern desolation of the scene, but we are 
glad of the relief of a laugh. A modern hotel, household supplies of sugar, eggs, 
flour, and coffee, not to dwell upon the brisk donkey and his plump rider — bring 
us down — (or up) from meditations among the tombs of a mighty Past. The 
cheerful ring of our voices comes back in a shocked echo from the furrowed walls 
closing us in on either hand. The upper heights are honeycombed with caves, 
winding paths, slight threads at a distance, leading to black mouths of some. 
These were, ages ago, L he cells of hermits, emulous of austere Elijah's fame, and 

(249) 



250 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



little dreaming, amid fastings and prayers and temptations, of the far different 
Warfare to be waged against flesh and blood by their successors in the tenantry of 
the high places of the rocks. 

Down the Wady Kelt which, by and by, runs parallel with our road, wears a 
fierce little brook, brawling so noisily that we can hear it before we can see it. 

"The Brook Cherith," David names it, and we have enough to think and talk 
of for the next mile. We alight then, and quitting the track, clamber over inter- 
vening hills and gulleys to reach the cliff at whose base foams the fussy torrent. 
It will shrink to a tiny rivulet in summer, and is making the most of its day of 
power. Right over against us, scarcely distinguishable in the shadow of the per- 
pendicular wall opposite from the rock to which it clings, is a miniature edition of 
a Greek convent. Those who founded it believed, or said that they believed, the 
site to be near Elijah's hiding-place during the miraculous drouth that plagued the 
land in Ahab's reign. They named it, however, the Monastery of St. John, the 
Elijah of the New Testament. It is marvelous how the materials for building 
even so thry an edifice were transported to the chosen spot, although we trace 
again upon the face of the precipice thread-like paths along which wild goats 
might fear to tread. The monastery seems actually to 1 1 back up ' ' against the 
grim wall as if afraid of falling. 

Pink and rose-color have given place to chalky whiteness in the towering sides 
and heads of the mountains hemming us in. We are going down all the while, 
- following generally the capricious turns of the brook, and never out of sight of 
the gorge it has worn in the everlasting hills. I have alighted to walk down a 
rocky fall — I cannot call it a descent — the abruptness of which makes me dizzy 
when I behold it from the palankeen; David Jamal and the sheik have gone on 
down, their horses treading warily upon the rolling stones, when half-way to the 
bottom we take a sharp turn and another world opens upon us. It is as if the 
two peaked promontories in which the sides of the pass terminate were rolled 
back like gates, and the landscape unfolded panorama-wise before our eyes. 
The plain of the Jordan loses itself behind sand-hills on our left, and farther 
away on the right is the Dead Sea, blue and serene as the Mediterranean on this 
afternoon. 

Glimpses of the sacred river sparkle between clumps of green. The oasis, 
luxuriant upon the banks, disperses in sparser verdure and coppices of thorn trees 
receding from the water. The white tents of our camp gleam near one of these 
groves, and to reach it we must cross a plain overgrown with bushes, nearly a mile 
in width. The track is sandy; the mules with the best intentions with regard to 
their waiting supper, cannot make much speed. I am ashamed of the folly, but I 
have not been so undeniably terrified since first setting foot upon Syrian soil, as in 
discovering that the moving brown objects partially concealed by the low growth 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



are camels — a herd of them — pasturing with nobody near to hinder any demon- 
stration they may take it into their hideous heads to make toward the equipage 
which excites their curiosity. Utterly ignorant as to the stampeding proclivities 
of my favorite abominations, I do not know whether to expect a charge in force, 
or a challenge to single combat. There are, I judge, at least one hundred of the 
hulking creatures munching the coarse grass, stripping leaves from the bushes 
and principally — or so it appears to me — wandering aimlessly over the meadow in 
quest of some stray bit of mischief peculiarly suited to the camel-ine nature. 




"A MINIATURE EDITION OF A CONVENT." 

All three of my mounted escorts have ridden on, Jamal, doubtless to make all 
ready for our reception in camp, and the sheik for Jamal's good company. With 
difficulty I restrain the wild impulse to scream to Alcides' disappearing figure as 
Massoud gallops after the pair now lost to sight in the coppice. Glancing through 
the window on my right hand, I see a particularly malevolent camel, a big blackish 
brute, "point" me fifty feet off, and come straight toward the palankeen, nose 
outstretched and shoulders hunched up after the manner of that most idiotic of 
feathered bipeds — a turkey-hen. In a truce a dozen other noses take the same 
line, and a row of the horrors is coming directly for us. The muleteers pay no 



252 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



attention to them, until my energetic gesticulation directs their eyes to the peril. 
Then both laugh a little, and one shouts carelessly at the foremost camel, who 
halts to stare at us — and with joy unspeakable, yet which I dare not confess, I 
behold the top of Alcides' kafeyah above the bushes that swallowed him up, 
just now, and he canters back to see what has become of me. With all the con- 
sideration for my welfare that never sleeps or wavers, he has not bethought him- 
self of my antipathy for the desert craft. 

' 4 What harm could they do to you ? They are the most peaceable of animals, ' ' 
he chides, laughingly. 

I offer no excuse for the silly terrors, from the effects of which I do not fully 
recover until the cup of four-o clock tea Imbarak has ready when we dismount at 
the tent-door, has been swallowed and the exceeding beauty of the view begins to 
act soothingly upon jarred nerves. The absurd incident has peaceable fruits of 
righteousness in one particular, at least — I shall never again sneer at a woman who 
jumps upon a chair at sight of a mouse, or screams when a spider runs over her 
neck or cheek. 

The situation of the camp is, as usual, well chosen. We are, as I have indi- 
cated, upon the outskirts of the oasis. Beyond the band of verdure, apparently so 
near that we are incredulous as to the miles that separate us from them, rise the 
mountains of Moab, purpled by the sunset, solemn with the glooms of falling 
evening. A double peak is pointed out as Mount Nebo. 

i There is light enough for us to read in the clear type of the ' 1 International 
Teachers' Edition," how " Moses went up from the plains of Moab unto the moun- 
tain of Nebo, to the top of Pisgah " — (or the hill) , " that is over against Jericho. 
And the Lord showed him all the land of Gilead, unto Dan, and all Naphtali, 
and the land of Ephraim, and Manasseh, and all the land of Judah, unto the 
utmost sea. ' ' 

(" That is the Mediterranean," is interjected here.) 

"And the south, and the plain of the valley of Jericho, the city of palm- 
trees, unto Zoar." 

Jericho was worth having in that age, and fourteen hundred years thereafter, 
when enamored Antony deeded it to Cleopatra, from whom Herod rented it - The 
flow of milk and honey was scarcely a figure of speech. The fertile plains, irri- 
gated from the Jordan, were grazed by flocks and herds, and bee-culture was one 
of the chief industries of the population. "A divine region," says Josephus, 
"covered with beautiful gardens and groves of palms of different kinds." 

There are not a dozen palms in sight, when we stroll to the top of the bank 
beyond the camping-ground, for an unobstructed view, but the Jericho oranges 
have a reputation of their own. A man sent into the town on an errand brings 
back immense citrons, six inches in length and ten in circumference, sweet 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



253 



oranges, and, rather as a curiosity than to please the palate, sweet lemons, which 
we find insipid. It is David's will that the dining-tent be decorated this evening, 
and the messenger is laden with fruit-bearing branches of citron and lemon-trees, 
long sprays of acacia, studded with fluffy golden balls, deliciously fragrant; an 
unknown white flower, and, because I have expressed a desire to see them, bunches 
of the famous "Dead Sea apples." Several clusters are hung against the palan- 
keen curtain, and Alcides transfers the group to a " film," while I cut open some 
of the nondescript vegetables for the purpose of classification. The writer who 
called them 1 ' a sort of potato, ' ' looked no further than leaves and flower, which 
strongly resemble those of the potato. But they grow upon a bush from two to 



six feet high, and in color and shape are identical with our yellow egg tomato. 
The seed, also, are those of the tomato, but dark-brown, as is the soft pulp sur- 
rounding them. Jamal says that they give forth a goodly smell at a certain stage 
of ripeness. Now, we find in them no particular odor of any kind beyond a 
certain rank weediness shared by them with scores of other plants. They are not 
edible, nor yet poisonous, and assuredly are never filled with ashes. 

"What sort of growth do you suppose the poet had in mind when he wrote — 



queries Alcides, returning the kodak to its case. ' 'And no tourist in modern 
Egypt can find the genuine lotus. There is a sign in New York City: ' Destroyer 




AT SUNSET. 



And Dead Sea fruit shall quench the thirst 
Of those who long for wine ?" 



254 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



of Moths. ' Foreign travel might be advertised as a ' Universal Myth De- 
stroyer.' " 

"We are to have visitors !" David comes up to say. 

A long man and a short woman are alighting from their horses. It does not 
surprise, however it may annoy us, to recognize the Inevitables. It is in accord- 
ance with the law of the general fitness of things — especially of human things — 
that Dr. and Mrs. 
Sharpe should have 
" dropped in" upon 
our sunset rest on their 
way to the Jordan Ho- 
tel in the lower valley. 

With hospitable 
tact, the head of our 
commissary department 
has fresh tea made, and 
our easiest chairs are 
paraded for the visitors. 
It chimes in with our 
present opinion of the 
ex-college -president 
that he rejects sugar 
and cream, and gulps 
the boiling-hot liquid 
without winking. Set- 
ting the cup down with 
unnecessary stress, he 
summons David. 

' ' Now, I dare say 
you have been telling 
these 'Innocents 
Abroad'" — in grim- 
mest pleasantry — "that 
the contemptible 1 run ' 
of rain-water up there is the Brook Cherith, where Elijah was fed twice a day by 
the ravens?" 

David's inclination of the head and slight smile are the soul of the Oriental's 
respectful forbearance. 

"And being a latter-day dragoman, you have thought it incumbent upon 
you to hint at doubts of the ravens themselves ? Some traveled fool — the most 




DEAD SEA FRUIT. 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



255 



obnoxious species 01 fool extant — probably a professor of theology — has rattled off 
a lot of stuff about the same word meaning ' ravens ' and 'Arabians ' or, as others 
have it — ' merchants, ' or still others — 'Orbites ' — the inhabitants of the neighboring 
city of Orb. Each and all of these efforts to explain away the miracle plainly 
recorded in the inspired Word is an insult to the Book and to the learning of those 
who translated it into the vulgar tongue. ' ' 
Alcides has got hold of an idea. 

' ' If the word translated ' ravens ' can be made to mean any one of the three 
other things 3-ou have mentioned, why not give Elijah the benefit of the doubt, 
and relieve his memory from the obloquy of eating tainted flesh ? Anybody who 
knows the raven' s habits and tastes must prefer this reading. What more likely 
than that the Bedouins would have protected and fed the fugitive who threw him- 
self upon their hospitality ? They would do it to-day, wouldn't they, David ?" 

"Without a doubt, Captain." 

"The question, }^oung gentleman, is not what you, or I, or anybody else 
would p-efer — ' ' 

"Now, doctor, dear, why will you dispute with everybody ?" Mrs. Sharpe 
slips in, plaintively. " It is so much sweeter and more Christian to believe what 
the Church and the dragomans, who were born here and have lived here all their 
lives, tell us, than to be forever in the seat of the scornful, as one might say. 
As for Cherith — doesn't the Bible say expressly that it dried up, after a while, 
and what more likely than when the summer weather came on — and, as you have 
remarked," turning to Alcides — " the idea of tainted meat isn't pleasant to are- 
fined person. ' ' 

Her spouse jumps up and strides awa}^ to his horse, calling harshly to the 
dragoman that the sun is down and they ought to be off. Mrs. Sharpe finishes 
the tea she has had qualified with ' ' two lumps, a good deal of cream, and a dash 
of hot water — if you please !" before rising to follow. 

"The blessed man is a saint at heart, but a little impatient of contradiction," 
she murmurs oilily with her " good night." 

We renew our laugh over the interv iew after dinner, when a company of 
friends from the hotel below walk over the intervening half-mile to pass the even- 
ing with us. There are two clergymen among the guests and both have fled for 
their lives, having dared to lean toward what we call " the Bedouin theory." 

We are thankful nothing was said to the critic of Nebo or Pisgah, in looking 
by the light of a late moon toward the solemn height across the river. Already 
we have learned to seek out that point of the landscape, and dream, in gazing upon 
it, of the solitary man who climbed it to see 1 1 sweet fields beyond the swelling flood, " 
before dying there alone. 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 



THE DEAD SEA. 

GHE march over the plains is begun betimes on the morrow It leads, 
shortly after quitting the camp, right through a Moslem burial- 
ground. Six men are hollowing a shallow grave in the sand; about 
a stone's cast away, the corpse that is to fill it, wrapped in coarse 
matting, is laid in the shadow of a thorn- tree; a group of women wail and sob 
intermittently about it; the intermission is devoted to cheerful chat, probably to 
gossip. 

" It was an old man, or they would not be laughing and talking between their 
crying-fits," says David, in riding by. " If he were young, they would mourn 
loud and long. ' ' 

Chalk hills bound the tedious level in the direction from which we have come; 
the purple mountains of Moab are upon the left; all about us are spread sand- 
dunes and clumps of scrub-growth; thorn bushes — the "Spina Christi " — or 
" Christ- thorn," with wild willows, and now and then a bunch of pinkish flowers 
growing upon a tall succulent stem, with fleshy leaves, and a shrub resembling the 
larch, but with more feathery foliage, that bears brownish-red berries. In an hour 
the land dips to a lower plain where the recent rains have settled in bluish mud. 
The horses keep upon drier ground, David and the sheik dashing away for horse- 
back practice upon a stretch of short, scant grass. Both are well mounted, and 
the racing, the sudden turnings and wheelings, the bounds and curvetings of the 
blooded animals are interesting to watch. My muleteers are ankle-deep in the 
sticky mire, drawing their feet out with a sucking sound. The subaltern has 
taken off his red slippers (it is always a puzzle to me how he ever keeps them on, 
for they are turned in under the heel and held in place by the toes only) and 
carries them in his hand till I suggest that he put them into the boot of the palan- 
keen. 

The sun shines hotly overhead by the time we get an unobstructed view of the 
Dead Sea. A blue haze hangs above it and veils the encompassing range of 
mountains; ineffable lights play over hills and sea; the water gives back the sun- 
shine from dimpling waves. All the storied desolateness of the scene is to be 
found upon the land. The horses kick up salt as they walk, and about the hoof- 
prints in the sands are borders like hoar-frost — salt and so acrid to the tongue, 
that I marvel at the mules' disposition to snatch mouthfuls of it. 

(256) 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



257 



Hereabouts, archaeologists incline to locate Sodom and Gomorrah, and not in 
the bed of the salt sea. 

Another shock to early belief and dreams ! Never more can I repeat the 
weird lines conned with delightful shivers in my girlhood: 

The wind blows chill across the gloomy waves 

How unlike the green and dancing main ! 
The surjj;e is foul as if it rolled o'er graves ; — 

Stranger ! here lie the cities of the plain. 

Another myth goes down before scientific investigation. The waves are not 
gloomy, much less foul, and the tradition that the cities of the plain lie under- 













: ■ ; ' ' ■ ', . - . - 
: _ ... .. 


d 



WOMEN CROSSING PI.AIN ON THEIR WAY TO THE BURIAL. 



neath is — traditional ! Loath to admit all this, we have fled to the history and 
the testimony concerning the destruction of the guilty towns, and are confounded 
that the main narrative and confirmative passages to which the margin refers us, 
do not so much as intimate the engulfment by the Dead Sea of Sodom, Gomorrah, 
Admah and Zeboim. Again and again, we read, that they were " overthrown by 
the Lord in His wrath," but the incoming of the bitter waters has no part in the 
tragedy. Furthermore — the " cities of the plain " would show that they were at 
17 




(258) 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



259 



the basin of the Jordan lying at the upper, or northern end of the sea. The 
southern border is sharply precipitous, and a line of mountains would have hidden 
from Abraham in Hebron, " the smoke of the country that went up like the smoke 
of a furnace, ' ' had this ' 1 country ' ' occupied the present bed of the Dead Sea. 
Excavations in the mounds near the Jordan are constantly unearthing the rubbish 
of buried towns, and the subsoil of the waste lands over which we are riding is ■ 
saturated with bituminous ooze. ' ' The vale of Siddim was full of slime-pits ' ' — ■ 
i. e., say erudite authorities, liquid bitumen, such as was used for mortar in the 

I ; • ■ m 




SAND-DUNES AND C DUMPS OF SCRUB GROWTH. - 

tower of Babel, and by Semiramis in building Babylon. The doomed cities came 
to their ruin by brimstone and fire from the Lord. The whole region would burn 
like tinder if once ignited. The agency of water in the terrible work does n ot 
appear in the sacred record. 

"I am afraid we must give it up," concludes my fellow-student, ruefully. 
"But should we encounter Dr. Sharpe here — (which may the fates forfend !) we 
will not admit our discomforture to him. He is quite capable of discounting the 
whole story, Bible or no Bible." 

Two large boats are beached upon the shelving shingle, lapped by the spark- 
ling waves. The government has a monopoly of the bitumen that floats upon the 



26o 



THE FEAG OF THE ORIENT. 



surface of the Dead Sea, and the boats are here to collect it. A piece weighing 
fourteen tons arose to the top of the water last week, and smaller fragments are 
found in abundance, especially after a storm of wind. To the government alone 
belongs all the salt brought into and sold in Syria. The drift-wood along the 
shore of this sea is thickly encrusted with it, and the peasants of the region 
come by stealth to scrape it off for family use. When detected in the act, they 
are arrested and punished as thieves. 

Of course, Alcides must take the regulation bath in the saline waves, so 
buoyant that, as he reports afterward, it is impossible to sink oneself without 
great effort, and then the body bounds back to the surface like a rubber ball. 
While he is absent with an attendant, I pace the wet shingle, as hard as a floor, 
and find mood and scene wondrously tranquil — not at all what might be expected 
with the Dead Sea washing the tips of my boots, and the overthrow of Sodom 
and Gomorrah vivid in my mind. Far away toward the southern extremity of 
the shining sheet, which is likewise known as 4< Eake Asphaltum," once stood 
Machias, in whose dungeons John the Baptist was murdered, and nearer to us 
*' little Zoar, " spared that Eot might take refuge there. The latter place is yet 
more to me because it was the boundary of the sweep of the undimmed eye of the 
prophet, nigh unto death, and yet in the full vigor of manly perfection. 

My eyes return, and lingeringly, to " Nebo's lonely mountain," sublime in 
noon-tide serenity, still the warder of the plain and sea. All the beauty of the 
" city of palm-trees" and the "glory" (not the "swellings") of Jordan, could 
not have hindered a compassionate thought from crossing the seer's mind as he 
beheld from afar the region he had so lately described as ' ' the land of brimstone, 
and salt, and burning, that is not sown, nor beareth, nor any grass groweth 
therein — Sodom and Gomorrah and Admah and Zeboim, which the L,ord over- 
threw in His anger, and His wrath." 



(261) 



CHAPTER XXIX. 



THE JORDAN. 




HE luncheon-tent is pitched upon the very spot from which, says 
tradition, Elijah ascended to heaven. 

Stretched luxuriously upon the rugs with which David has car- 
peted the turf, we, as is our custom, read the story of the event from 



the original record, and draw conclusions unbiased by popular tales and erudite 

commentators. 

The two prophets passed over Jordan between the waters divided hither 
and thither by the stroke of Elijah's mantle ; — "And it came to pass as they still 
went on and talked, that, behold, there appeared a chariot of fire and horses of 
fire, and parted them both asunder ; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into 

heaven." 

" Elisha took up also the mantle of Elijah that fell from him, and went back 
and stood by the bank (or ' lip,' says the margin) of Jordan." 

We are within fifty yards of the shelving brink, a distance scarcely worth the 
mention of a return to the river. It is more likely to our imaginations that 
the stupendou miracle — second only to the Ascension of the King of Glory and 
the lifting of the celestial gates to let Him in — took place much further away 
toward the interior, perhaps upon the bushy plain back there, over which horses 
and mules have forced a way through thicket and briery tangle to reach the sacred 
stream. 

All visitors agree in pronouncing the Jordan a disappointment at first sight. 
It is, to put it plainly, a mere creek — by actual measurement, one hundred and 
ten feet wide, and seemingly not more than fifty. So delusive is the apparent 
width that we cannot credit the dragoman's respectful insistence upon his figures 
until the picture taken by the kodak of the thither bank shows, by the blurred 
lines, that the jungle of bulrushes and willows lining the water's edge is almost 
beyond range. Nor is there anything dignified in the environing scene. A 
fringe of ragged trees, tall flags and flowering reeds is broken in front of our noon 
encampment by an open space through which we view the Moabitish shore. On 
that side the ground rises somewhat abruptly and is more heavily wooded. Back 
of it are the mountains of Moab — mysterious barriers which we long hourly the 

(262) 



264 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



more intensely to visit. In our immediate foreground, unconscious David, water- 
jug in hand, has stopped to offer friendly admonition to the younger dragoman 
of a party of tourists who occupy a conspicuous position in the field of the camera, 
and are lunching among the willows. In common with man}^ of his guild, the 
young fellow is exalted above measure by the circumstance that he can speak 

both English and Ara- 
bic, and that the for- 
eigners he has in 
charge are at his mercy 
in the matter of topog- 
raphy and bargains. 
He is sharply authori- 
tative in forbidding a 
girl of fourteen and a 
boy of twelve not to 
cut canes in the bushes 
up the stream. 

"Don't go ten 
steps away unless I 
give you permission !" 
is the order that catches 
Jamal's ear. 

1 ' I have told him 
that he had no right to 
use that tone in speak- 
ing to an} T of his trav- 
elers," David answers 
our interrogations as to 
the meaning of the 
scene. "He is young 
and 'fresh.' In time 
he will learn better. 
No ! there is no real 
That is, not now. In the old 




'HE JORDAN, 



danger in wandering off a little way from a party 
time, robbers were hidden in the brushwood and canes." 

Alcides, accompanied by Serkeese, disappears among the undergrowth lower 
down the bank, intent upon a literal seven dips in the Jordan. A lesser number 
would not rid skin and hair from the smart and stickiness left by the Dead Sea 
bath. The men of the party under the broken willow tree, taking the children 
along, stray off to cut walking-sticks as souvenirs of day and spot. I send one of 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



265 



the rugs furnished by the more experienced dragoman to the one lady of the com- 
pany under the escort of the " fresh " young Syrian, when I see her lie down 
upon the sloping turf, and double her arms under her head for a pillow. Then, 
among my cushions, I look up "Jordan " in the " Biblical Gazeteer " at the back 
of ' 1 the best Baedeker for Palestine. ' ' 

While reading of the passage of the twelve tribal representatives through the 
"dry ground" of the river-bed, each with a stone upon his shoulder, "which 
they took out of Jor- 
dan and carried them 
over with them unto 
the place where they 
lodged, and laid them 
down there, ' ' finally 
at Joshua's command, 
"pitching them in 
Gilgal,"— the rush of 
the muddy, crooked 
stream in the stillness 
of high noon takes on 
solemnity to the ear 
of my spirit. I close 
the book upon my fin- 
ger and look from the 
shadow of the tent- 
hood upon the historic 
current as one awak- 
ened out of sleep. 
Hereabouts, beyond 
the shadow of doubt, 
the host of Israel 
crossed into the Prom- 
ised Land. Midway 
in the stream— per- 
haps upon the very 
spot on which I am 
gazing — the ark, up- 
borne by the white-robed priests, held back the flow from the far-off source at 
the foot of Hermon " until all the people were passed clean over Jordan." 

Slowly, and as if I had never heard or seen it before — I reread the wonderful 

tale: 




- 



UNCONSCIOUS DAVID, WAT] 



266 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



"And as they that bear the ark were come unto Jordan, and the feet of the 
priests that bear the ark were dipped in the brim of the water (for Jordan over- 
floweth all his banks all the time of harvest), the waters which came down from 
above stood and rose up upon an heap very far from the city Adam, that is beside 
Zaretan ; and those that came down toward the sea of the plain, even the salt sea, 
failed and were cut off ; and the people passed over right against Jericho." 

Muddy, tortuous, and neither broad nor long, the Jordan has yet a certain 
dignity of its own, or so it seems to me, as I watch the swift, steady flow toward 
the salt sea that is to swallow it up and render no account of the flood poured 

into it. At this point 
it is nine or ten feet 
deep, and, as Alcides 
reports upon his re- 
turn, icy cold. He 
had meant to land 
upon the Moab side 
a f t e r swimming 
across, but hastened 
back, fearing cramp 
should he remain too 
long in the water. We 
are thankful for the 
change of purpose 
upon hearing that the 
rushes of the opposite 
border mask a most 
deceitful and danger- 
ous quagmire. The 
river must have under- 
gone many an d 
mighty changes since 
the "this day" (B. 
C. 1427) in the which, 
we are told, other twelve stones, ' ' set up by Joshua in the place where the 
feet of the priests which bare the ark of the covenant stood," were known to 
be there. They are probably there now, buried deep beneath the alluvial deposit 
of centuries. 

The longer we look at the river and talk of the " wonders " done in and 
about it, the more majestic it grows. There is silent eloquence in its swift prog- 
ress to the sea of death, grave, self-contained consciousness of the part it has 




OUR SHIRK AT THE JORDAN. 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 267 

played in the world's history, and of its importance as a type of the Dark Stream 
each must ford for himself when the word is given to " pass over Jordan." 

Over yonder were pitched the tattered tents of the great host, tremblingly 
expectant of the entrance denied to their sinning fathers into the Canaan of 
prophecy and prayer. We may have in sight the place from which Joshua issued 




"GATHERED BY DAVID FROM THE EDGE OE THE STREAM." 



the command; — "Sanctify yourselves; for to-morrow the Lord will. do wonders 
among you. " 

The morrow that was never to dawn for the sleeper, — 

" On Nebo's lonely mountain, 
On gray Beth-poor's height." 

Again, and from the deeps of our hearts — " Poor Moses ! " 

Not far from where we are sitting, John the Baptist preached, and "there 
went out to him Jerusalem, and all Judea, and all the region round about Jordan 
and were baptized of him in Jordan, confessing their sins." 

Above our very heads the "heavens were opened, and" the Divine Man 
44 saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon Him." The 



268 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



exact spot cannot be designated with any degree of certainty, although since the 
fifth century after Christ, and we know not how much earlier, crowds of pilgrims 
resort yearly to the region round about Jordan to be baptized and to bathe in 
waters they esteem as holy. 

We have left no other place in Palestine with more reluctance than we 
acknowledge as, having seen our bottles of Jordan and of Dead Sea water 

bestowed in the bottom 
of the palankeen, and a 
bundle of walking-sticks 
and feathery grasses 
gathered by David from 
the edge of the stream, 
strapped upon Serkeese's 
luggage, we turn our 
backs — probably forever 
— upon the scene that 
looks so tame and is 
fraught with so much of 
supreme and tender in- 
terest. Our little caravan 
is headed straight for a 
clump of trees marking 
the sight of Gilgal — 
Joshua's Gilgal. The 
oasis of the Jordan 
dwindles into briers and 
thorns and such coarse 
herbage as can thrive in 
the salty soil, before we 
reach the few mounds — 
or rather hillocks — sup- 
posed to mark the site 
house of zaccheus. of the place where the 

rite of circumcision was renewed in the temporary lull of hostilities caused by the 
awe cast upon the people of the land by the news of the miraculous crossing of the 
Jordan. Where, too, the children of Israel were encamped when the}' kept the 
passover on the fourteenth day of the month at even in the plains of Jericho. 

' ' And the manna ceased on the morrow after they had eaten of the old corn of 
the land; neither had the children of Israel manna any more, but they did eat of 
the fruit of the land of Canaan that year." 




270 



THE FlyAG OF THE ORIENT. 



There were two millions of the chosen people by now. The land to which 
they had emigrated had need to be all aflow with milk and honey, and stored 
beyond our power of conception as we traverse the waste places, with s 1 butter 
of kine, and milk of sheep, with fat of lambs, and rams of the breed of Bashan, 
and goats, with the fat of kidneys of wheat, and the pure blood of the grape." 

We skirt modern Jericho upon our campward way. It is a dismal collection 
of mud-huts, covered with turf and with reeds packed over with earth. A ruin 
of brick walls, unroofed and crumbling away, is pointed out as the house of 
Zaccheus. Beyond is a modern hotel, insignificant in size, and mean in architec- 
ture. In following the winding, muddy lanes, we have glimpses over a wall of 
a garden belonging to a monastic order, wherein grow lemon, orange and citron 
trees; the feathery foliage of the acacia-tree brushes our cheeks in the narrowest 
turnings, and we secure handfuls of the little golden tufts to be used as perfume 
in handkerchiefs and glove-cases. 

It has been a long and an eventful day, and like the flash of lights from the 
windows of home, falls upon our vision the gleam of color from the peak of white 
tents, when the muddy maze has been threaded. A breeze from the hills leading 
up to Jerusalem almost four thousand feet higher than the plain of the salt sea 
and the plain of Jericho, lifts into distinctness the crescent-and-star of the Turkish 
flag over the dining- tent, and the stars and stripes under whose dear folds we are 
to sleep to-night. 




CHAPTER XXX. 



SUNDAY IN CAMP. 

OHE phrase 1 1 Sabbath stillness ' ' borrows new meaning from the expe- 
rience of a Lord's day passed in a wilderness camp. The very mules 
comprehend that nothing is expected of them, and do not offer to rise 
from breakfast until luncheon-time. The big leader of the palankeen 
team lies in the shadow of the burden he is accustomed to bear six days in the 
week, in lordly ibrgetfulness of }^esterday and carelessness of to-morrow — a sedate 
preacher to the care- taking bipeds who watch him from the tent-door. 

Our morning-reading has to do with Joshua and with Jericho. The city of 
palm-trees, and of roses rivaling those of Damascus in prodigality of bloom, was 
still a place of note in our Lord's day, and the great mound to the left of our 
camp probably hides the ruins of one of the fortified towers from which, perhaps, 
as we like to think, the inhabitants, " straitly shut up because of the children of 
Israel, ' ' watched during six suspenseful days the daily circuit made by priests in 
sacerdotal robes, bearing the ark, and followed by " all the men of war." Fancy 
dwells, in the perusal, upon the awful silence that prevailed among a host so vast 
that it must have girdled the place, unless measurements made in modern times 
err as to the extent of ancient Jericho. 

''Ye shall not shout, not make any noise with your voice," thus ran the 
leader's order — " neither shall any word proceed out of your mouth, until the day 
I bid you shout. Then, shall ye shout, ' ' 

" And it came to pass on the seventh day that they arose about the dawning 
of the day," I read aloud. 

There was need of an early start and brisk work, for between that gray day- 
break and the going down of the sun behind the hills lifting their bald heads 
against the cloudless heavens to-day, the town was compassed seven times. It 
would be well on towards evening when ' ' it came to pass when the people heard 
the sound of the trumpet and shouted with a great shout that the wall fell down 
flat "—or, as the margin has it, "under it." That is, at the mighty roar which 
must have reverberated from distant Nebo and shaken the waters of the salt sea. 

In the sanguinary history of conquest which succeeds the tale of this mar- 
velous siege, we come once and again upon the war-cry — 1 ' As Joshua had done 
to Jericho and her king." 

(271). 



272 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



Alcides calls a halt, by-and-by. In his opinion the Jews were never a war- 
like people unless urged to the front, and then required divine interposition in 
every exigency. 

" Who of us does not? " I interpolate here. 

"True — but listen ! The surprise of Ai was planned by the Lord. When 
Joshua made a forced night-march from Gilgal, we are expressly told that ' the 
Lord discomfited ' the five kings from Jerusalem, Hebron, Jarmuth, Lachish and 
Eglon, so that they fled before Israel, and ' He cast down great hailstones from 




ARMENIAN VILLAGERS OF VAX PROVINCE, NEAR THE 
PERSIAN BORDER. 

the children of Israel slew 7 with the sword.' " 

The young critic breaks off to observe, — ' ' It 
makes one dizzy to think of it. And how kings 
quarreled for the possession of this miserable stretch 
of waste land. Eglon of Moab ' possessed the city of palm-trees,' and David's shorn 
ambassadors took refuge here until their beards were grown, and three hundred 
and forty-five former inhabitants of Jericho were returned to the beloved oasis 
after the captivity ; Anton}- thought it good enough to give to Cleopatra ; Herod 
the Great coveted and bought it from her, fortified and built in it his favorite 




THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



273 



palace — where he died by the way. There was a big hippodrome here, in which 
he ordered all the leading citizens of Jerusalem and the vicinity to be imprisoned 
when he knew his end was near, and left a dying injunction that they should be 
massacred as soon as the breath was out of his body — a Shylockian device to pro- 
cure a general mourning for the dead king. And look at Jericho now ! ' ' 

The forenoon wears on peacefully. The writing-table is brought out to the 
tent-door and — alwa3 T s in sight of Nebo — letters are written to the dear ones in 
the distant home — all done as in a dream-world, so steeped are thought and fancy 
with the tragic story of that dead past. 

We are still dreaming as we visit what modern travelers and natives know as 
the Sultan' s Spring ; a living fountain bubbling from the side of the mound of 



which I have spoken as covering a fortification of the Jericho destroyed by Joshua. 
Excavations have brought to view broken marbles and pottery, the remains of 
temples and dwellings belonging to a long-buried era. The whole hill is a con- 
glomerate of dumping grounds of different ages, kings and conquerors having 
acted as scavengers. A bit of reddish stone picked up at random on the hillside 
proves upon inspection to be a fragment of rosso antico marble, susceptible of 
exquisite polish, and is laid away to do duty as a paper-weight, when Jericho and 
the unreal outlying lands shall have taken their place among the other by-gones 
of this witching winter. 

The Sultan's Spring has another name in David's mouth. 





MODERN JERICHO. 



274 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



"If the Captain will look at Second Kings, second chapter, from the nine- 
teenth to the twenty-second verses, ' ' he intimates as we stand above the shallow 
pool, and remark upon the solidity of the masonry securing and bounding it. 

It is the well-known incident of the appeal of the men of Jericho to the 
prophet tarrying in their midst, after the translation of Elijah while the sons of 
the prophets sought vainly for his vanished friend. For, " Peradventure the 
Spirit of the Lord 
hath taken him 
up, and cast him 
upon some moun- 
tain, or into some 
valley." 

"The situa- 
tion of the city is 
pleasant, ' ' the Jer- 
icho people repre- 
sented, ' ' but the 
water is naught and 
the ground bar- 
ren." * * * "And 
he went forth unto 
the spring of wa- 
ters, and cast the 
salt in there and 
said, Thus saith 
the Lord, I have 
healed these wa- 
ters. There shall 
not be from thence 
anymore dearth or 
barren land. So 
the waters were 
healed unto this 
day." 

" This is Elisha's Fountain, if wise men are to be believed," comments the 
guide. 

The healed waters are crystal-clear, and, led off in various directions from 
the outlet, make green and flourishing the small gardens of herbs in the neigh- 
borhood. The sides are covered with succulent plants. All growing things 
within reach of it press eagerly toward the life-giving stream. 




IN THE TENT DOOR. 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



2 75 



" It is a pity that EHsha set the she-bears upon the children so soon after a 
deed the good of which has come down to us, ' ' regrets the reader, and I cannot 
gainsay the stricture. 

In flat contradiction of a serene sunsetting, the eastern sky is a passion of 
flame-color as I draw aside the flap of my tent-door on Monday morning. 
Against it lie the mountains of Moab, misty purple as an August plum; waves. 

of softest pink quiver 
up to the zenith; the 
yellow sand-hills 
catch the reflection 
and deepen into 
orange-red. In all 
the camp no one is 
astir except John 
and the head- mule- 
teer; horses and 
mules have not 
aroused themselves 
from their Sabbath 
rest. The world en- 
closed by the eastern 
and western ranges 
of hills is still and 
cool, and transfig- 
ured by the magic 
JM bath of glorious 
color. Hastily 
throwing on a dress- 
ing-gown, I steal to 
Alcides' door and 
summon him to en- 
joy the sight with 
me. 

Presently we repeat in unison, " It will be foul weather to-day, for the sky is 
red and lowering. ' ' 

David is of like opinion for once with Pharisee and Sadducee, for he hastens 
the preparations for departure. The cords and stakes of the dining-tent are 
loosened while we are at breakfast. When we issue from the shaking tenement, 
palankeen and horses are ready. The sunlight has not touched the lower valleys 
when we take the road to Jerusalem. The defiles gloom blackly between the bleak 





EIJSHA'S FOUNTAIN. 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



277 



heights; the profound stillness is even more oppressive than when we traversed 
the same road last week. Above the sullen mists that hide the depths play broken 
rainbows; the bold brows of the distant hills are wreathed with fogs, turbans of 
white and gray, changing to the prismatic colors as the sun darts through a rift in 
the gathering clouds. The mules pick their way among rolling stones, and along 
shelving paths, where the palankeen tilts crazily; David and the sheik ride mutely 
ahead, heads lifted often toward the darkened sky. 

Alcides alights to unstrap a roll from Serkeese's luggage. It contains mack- 
intosh, rubber boots and helmet, and is swung now from Massoud's saddle. At 




PREPARATIONS FOR DEPARTURE. 



the dragoman's suggestion, I get out my own waterproof, and fasten the palankeen 
windows. Our preparations are made none too soon. As we turn the pass 
beyond the Khan of the Good Samaritan, the storm strikes us, sharp and sudden. 
We have hardly time to see it rushing toward us in slant, white sheets, from a 
dozen different directions, when the road is filled with a falling volume of water, 
like a cloud-cataract, under which the horses stagger and the mules stop for a 
blind moment. There is a steady, bitter rain in our faces all the rest of the way. 
Enveloped in waterproof, furs and rugs, I sit well back in my corner, and, but for 



278 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



the spray drenching cap and veil, am unharmed. Serkeese pulls his abieh over 
his head, and bends almost double; Alcides and David ride erect, the rain pouring 
in sheets from their glistening mackintoshes, the eyes all that is visible of their 
faces under the visored helmets; the sheik is as impassive as a mummy. The 
foremost muleteer, at the first dash of the flood, has snatched off his heelless red 
slippers, and tucked them into the foot of the palankeen. In three minutes there 
is not a dry thread on him; in five, every wet thread is a tiny aqueduct, every 
fold of his garments a pool. The rain is at its bitterest worst when he breaks into 

song — the nasal drone 
that passes with the 
Syrian peasant for mu- 
sic — and keeps it up at 
scant intervals for at 
least five miles. 

I seem to have lis- 
te \ed forever to the 
dissonant chant by the 
time we halt for lunch- 
eon at the ruined khan 
opposite the Apostle's 
Fountain. At one end 
an arch of Roman ma- 
sonry protects the pal- 
let and rugs laid upon 
a ledge on which the 
proprietor sleeps at 
night. The roof is of 
reeds overlaid with 
turf, and the rain drips 
skrkkkse and luggage. through crevices upon 

the earthen floor. Six or eight men huddle about a fire of thorns built in the 
middle of the room. They fall back at our approach, and after David has laid 
our luncheon upon a rude table at the back of the room, nobody glances in our 
direction. It is a taciturn group. The cold and wet have taken all the spirit out 
of them, and there was never much. They part their ranks again to let a black 
woman pass to the fire, with a baby in her arms. The blackest, forlornest baby 
I have ever beheld, the creature sits upon a stool drawn up into the very area 
of flame and smoke, and shivers piteously in a violent ague, never uttering a 
whimper, but staring solemnly at the fire. 

"It will die, I think," says the mother, stolidly, to David, who replies, 
" Indeed, I think so," with more show of concern than is manifested by her. 




THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 2 79 

At the parting of the ways between Bethphage and Bethany, the sheik rides 
close to my palankeen, thrusts in a brown hand, and utters the only English word 
I am to hear from his lips: 

' ' Good-bye !" 

" His village is near," explains David. 

I have been in a deep reverie for a long hour. Thoughts of the Homeless 
Man who walked this weary road, foot-sore and heart-sore, have well-nigh supplied 




OUR HEAD MULETEER. 



the place of sight. As we pass Bethany, dimly visible through the curtain of rate, 
the solitary Figure is yet more vividly present to my imagination. 

In the exaltation of spirit begotten by these musings, it is a shock when the 
palankeen swerves abruptly to the side of the road to get out of the way of a 
carriage and three horses driven abreast, in Syrian fashion, and coming down the 



28o 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



hill at full speed. Before I can ask a question, the vehicle stops in mid-career, the 
horses falling back upon their haunches, and out springs Domian, the ex-partner 
of David Jamal, his dark, handsome face full of kindly solicitude, an umbrella in 
one hand, a bottle of brandy, already uncorked, in the other. In a trice we are 
bestowed among dry rugs in the interior of the coach, hot- water bottles at our feet, 
and the three horses are galloping back to town. 

" Mr. Gelat and I thought you should be met, madame," says the dragoman, 
and we discover, all at once, that we are drenched and chilled ic the bone, and 
must have been utterly wretched in another half-hour. 

"I shall have a fire kindled in my room !" I articulate between chattering 
teeth in alighting at the door of the Grand Hotel. 

Domian says nothing, but hurries me along corridors and across a great hall 
to my familiar quarters, throws the door open, and with the current of genial 
warmth there streams out upon us the red glow of firelight and the fragrance of 
tired woman's sweet restorer, — a cup of hot tea. 



CHAPTER XXXI. 

"THINE ANCIENT PEOPLE THE JEWS." 




NDER this name I heard them prayed for every day throughout my 
infancy and girlhood. The phraseology in which the patriarch of 
the household remembered them at the family altar varied little in 
all those years: 



"We pray Thee to have mercy upon Thine ancient people the Jews, and 
bring them into Thine Everlasting Kingdom, together with the fullness of the 
Gentiles. May they look upon Him whom they have pierced, and acknowledge 
Him as King of kings and Lord of lords." 

I am saying it over to myself on this murky afternoon, as, despite the corru- 
gated soles of my overshoes, I slip and slide upon the greasy mud of the Jewish 
quarter in the City of David. The smells are the foulest I have encount- 
ered, and we stir them into aggressiveness in our passage through the damp, 
breezeless air. It is Friday, and marketing is lively, in preparation for the 
national Sabbath. Every huckster has put forward his choicest wares; women, con- 
spicuous by their uncovered faces, have baskets on their arms, and haggle shrewdly 
over " green stuff," groceries and meat. Once we are shoved against a wall by a 
crowd of both sexes gathered about an auctioneer who is selling tainted fish at a 
piastre (eight cents) a pound. The ground is wet and steep; the stones are 
treacherous, the throng motley and unsavory, with an indescribable air of sordid- 
ness evident through the squalor of the region. 

My companion is Rev. Joseph Jamal, a cousin of our educated dragoman, and 
assistant rector of the English Church in Jerusalem. Under his guidance I have 
seen the various benevolent institutions established in Jerusalem by the Church 
Missionary Society which is an honor to English Christians and philanthropists. 
The Ophthalmic Infirmary, where tens of thousands of sufferers from the fearfully 
prevalent diseases of the eye are treated annually; the Dispensary, well stocked 
and admirably managed; the Industrial School, where carpentry, printing, book- 
binding, etc., are taught; the Hospital, fifty-five years old, which will be, erelong, 
transferred to the fine new building now in construction outside of the walls— one 
and all are fraught with deep interest to her who has seen enough of the Jewish 
population of Palestine to appreciate the needs and the discouragements of the work 
undertaken by the splendid organization named above. Mr. Jamal' s twenty years 
of labor in the service in the Church Missionary Society have fully qualified him 

(281) 



282 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



as an intelligent and trustworthy authority upon the subject which, during the 
past few days, has especially engrossed my time and thoughts. 

Threading the maze of filthy streets, we arrive presently at an archway so low 
that my tall guide stoops low, and I have to bow my head in passing it and enter- 
ing a sort of tunnel, wetter and fouler than the open street we have left, and 

sloping down- 
ward. Another 
turn, and a 
plunge of sev- 
eral steps, and 
Mr. J a m a 1 
knocks at a low, 
dingy door in a 
blank wall. It 
is opened by 
means of a cord 
running along 
the dark pas- 
sage, and we see 
nobody until we 
are met at the 
head of a flight 
of unclean stone 
steps by a ker- 
vasse in dirty 
uniform, with a 
red fez upon his 
head. He takes 
us into an apart- 
ment of fair size, 
the upper half 
raised by two 
steps above the 

lower, and lined 

in the; "box colony," tkrusalem. -j 

' J on three sides 

by a cushioned divan, on which we are seated. This is the drawing-room of the 

Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem. The floor is covered with matting; a few rugs are 

scattered here and there, and two small stands are set back against the wall. 

Besides these there is no furniture. The kervasse, having taken our cards to his 

master, returns in four or five minutes, ushering in two old men. One, tall and 




THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



with traces of former dignity and comeliness, walks in advance of his companion, 
who is his inferior in appearance and in office. Both wear dark-blue cloth gowns, 
lined and edged with coarse fur, and bands of like material trim the caps, which 
are round and flat on top. A moment later, a third man, similarly attired, enters, 
unannounced, and sits down upon the divan with the others, we facing them from 
the other side of the room. 

After a few and ceremonious preliminary remarks, we come to the chief object 
of my call. I ask the master of the house through my interpreter if he attaches 




ON THE WAY TO JERUSALEM. 

And when He was twelve years old, they went up to Jerusalem after the custom 
of the feast. — St. Luke ii: 42. 

any significance to the influx in late years of the Jews from other lands into 
Palestine. Also, if he can give me an approximate idea of the number who have 
thus immigrated within ten 3^ears. 

1 ' If you would know how many have come in the past sixty years, I should 
answer that there were but one thousand Jews in Jerusalem and the vicinity in 
1833. There are thirty thousand now." 

' ' How do you account for the steady increase of immigration ? Are all drawn 
by the same motive ?' 



28 4 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



" The Jews come to Palestine because they love it as the land of their fathers 
and their own country. Some have come expecting the Messiah. They are 
foolish. When He comes, He will rule the whole earth, not merely this little 
corner of the globe." 

"You expect, then, His personal advent? What will preface it?" 

"The Great 
Fight of Armaged- 
don must come first. 
Gog and Magog 
will appear and be 
overthrown. There 
will be a terrible 
bloody conflict of 
all nations in the 
Valley of Decision. ' * 
" Where there 
is not room to de- 
ploy four regi- 
ments !" I heard 
Dr. Merrill say in- 
dignantly, last 
night, but I forbear 
to quote the sensible 
obj ection to the 
chosen battlefield, 
I ask, instead: 

' ' Where is the 
promise of His com- 
ing? Do you see 
signs of the ap- 
proaching gathering 
of nations ?' ' 

' 'Who can say? 

JEWISH IMMIGRANTS IN JERUSALEM. ^v, .... . 

The political horizon 

is dark, and may mean much. Since the prophets passed away there is no man 
who can read the signs of the times. ' ' 

!< Where will the Messiah first appear?" 

" He will descend from heaven upon Mount Safed, the highest point of Gal- 
ilee. So say the holy writings." 

(I recall that Safed is pointed out as the 1 ' city set upon a hill ' ' to which our 




THE FLAG OF THK ORIENT. 



>8 5 



Lord, ever ready to illustrate His teachings by natural and present objects, may 
have pointed in the Sermon on the Mount.) 

" But," I say aloud, " we are told by Zechariah that when ' the Lord shall 
go forth and fight against those nations as when he fought in the day of battle, 
His feet shall stand 
upon the Mount 
of Olives which is 
before Jerusalem 
on the east.' " 

"True. The 
Messiah will pro- 
ceed from Safed to 
Olivet." 

' ' I read fur- 
ther that the Mount 
of Olives shall 
' cleave in the midst 
thereof toward the 
east and toward the 
west, and there 
shall be a very 
great valley, and 
half of the moun- 
tain shall remove 
toward the north, 
and half of it toward 
the south.' Will 
this prophecy, in 
your opinion and 
in the opinion of 
other learned men, 
be literally ful- 
filled?" 

My host inclines his head in grave assent. The colleague who sits next to 
him says decidedly, " Certainly, no one has ever questioned it." 

" Where — may I ask — do you read the prophecy concerning Safed?" 

" In the Talmud," with the air of a disputant ending a controversy. 

But I am intensely interested, and my interpreter being altogether in touch 
with my mood and desire, conveys my meaning so faithfully that I cannot refrain 
from further researches. 




HIS INFERIOR IN APPEARANCE AND IN OFFICE. 



286 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



"Tell him," I say to Mr. Jamal, "that some of the most learned Rabbis in 
America no longer expect a personal Messiah. They believe that the prophecies 
relative to His coming point to the perfectibility of hnman nature; to an advanced 
state of morality and subjugation of whatever is base and vicious in man's nature 
and conduct; to the cessation of war and crime, the elimination from body and 
mind of all that engenders sorrow, pain and death itself. ' ' 

For the first time, the old man gives signs of excitement as this speech is 
translated to him. He crosses one leg over the other nervously; his black eyes 
gleam under the w T hite brows; his raised hand and voice shake with agitation. 

' ' No devout Jew believes such a monstrous thing ! The men who assert it 
are infidels — materialists. The Messiah will be a real personage, great, holy, 
powerful, perfect, and He shall reign in the Mount Zion, forever and ever." 

I return to a former question: 

1 ' When will he come ? Are there indications that the time may be near ?' ' 
My venerable interlocutor retires unequivocally into his shell of dignified and 
official reserve. 

" Who can say ? That is in GOD'S hands — not in mine. " 

It is obvious that further catechizing would be unwelcome, and having par- 
taken of the usual refection of sweetmeats and coffee, we exchange a few conven- 
tional compliments and part amicably. 

Our next visit is to a poorer Rabbi, living in a more lowly abode, but as genial 
as the former was politely-frosty. He belongs to a sect whose business is the study 
of the law, and the shabby room is surrounded with bookshelves. So far from 
eluding such queries as I have put to his superior in office and worldly gear, he 
talks enthusiastically of his belief that the Kingdom of the Messiah is near at 
hand. He holds the same view with the Chief Rabbi as to the Great Battle of 
Armageddon. 

' ' Gog and Magog are, I am inclined to think, Russia. All nations will be 
engaged in the Valley of Jehoshaphat. The right will conquer, the God of Israel 
fighting for it. A congress of nations will be held and decide to restore Palestine 
to the Jews, who will thenceforward possess it and cause the waste places to break 
forth into singing, the desert to bloom as the rose." 

"But there is not room in Palestine — or in all Syria, for that matter — for one- 
half of the Jews now alive upon the earth." 

He smiles benignantly and with the calmness of his convictions: 

"You forget that they have never yet had all the Promised Land — ' from the 
river of Egypt' — the Nile — 'unto the great river, the river Euphrates.' The 
promise is ' ordered in all things and sure. ' The whole world will then be at 
peace; nations shall learn war no more. All will worship one only and true GOD,, 
the GOD of Israel." 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



287 



I put out my hand impulsively and we shake hands cordially upon this. 
" You are a Protestant !" I declare. 
"We serve the same Lord," he answers. 

After more sweets and more coffee, served by the Rabbi's wife — a motherly 
body — we are conducted by him into an amazingly small synagogue, one thousand 
years old, entirely underground, having been built when Jews were forced to 
worship in secret. It is lighted from above by means of two grated windows, like 
1 ' man-holes, ' ' let into the pavement. There is light enough to enable us to examine 
a curious old manuscript copy of the law, over six hundred years old, brought from 
Bagdad and, at my request, the Rabbi reads the lesson of the day from it, a quav- 
ering intone, such as we have heard at the Wailing-place. 

1 4 It is a poor place," he says, running his eye around the dank den, " and 
must always have been very dark. ' ' 

" Daniel prayed in a darker," I remind him. 

His eyes twinkle, good-humoredly. 

" And Jonah in still less desirable quarters !" is the unexpected rejoinder. 




CHAPTER XXXII. 



"THE BOX COLONY." 

OUR excursion to-day has brought us to a muddy common outside the 
walls of Jerusalem. Right in the centre of it sprawls the most miser- 
able village that can be imagined. Houses of unbaked clay and 
stubble, of cobble-stones held unsteadily in place by dried mud; 
board shanties roofed and sheathed with tin cans beaten out flat and nailed on, all 
one-roomed huts, built along miry alleys, hardly six feet wide — make up the 

"Box Colony" 
tenanted by immi- 
grant Jews from all 
quarters of the 
globe. The ground 
is loaned to them 
rent free by a 
wealthy Hebrew 
resident of Jerusa- 
lem. Most of the 
rooms are window- 
less, and every door 
stands wide open 
to admit the light 
of a short winter 
afternoon. A bun- 
dle of rags, or a 
heap of straw, does 
duty in each as a 
family bed; bra- 
ziers of charcoal are 
kindled with thorn- 
bushes, a heap of 
which lies in a 

central shed. There are children ! children ! everywhere. Four of us women 
have driven out from town as close to the settlement as a carriage can approach, 
then walk down the clayey slope. Not far from Dr. Sandrecsky's hospital is a 
neat dwelling inhabited by two American missionaries — ladies, by birth and 

J288) 




"AI.ONG MIRY AI^EYS. 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



289 



breeding, who, at their own charges, have devoted time and labor and life to the 
work of ameliorating the physical ills and enlightening the souls of this Jewish 
settlement. I have begged the favor of their escort, assured that the sight of 
these ministers of mercy will admit and recommend me everywhere. Mrs. Jamal 
accompanies me as interpreter. 

Our first call in the forbidding circuit is upon a family of Aymonites, or 
Arabian Jews, usually esteemed as the most devout of all the sects. Our mission- 
ary friends have 
spoken warmly of 
their faith in God 
and the revelation 
made in their Scrip- 
tures of Him and 
His purposes 
toward their race. 
An elderly woman 
sits flat upon the 
mud floor, stitching 
at a nondescript 
garment of many- 
colored rags. Near 
her stands a strik- 
ing figure — a man 
with an Arab face 
and head-gear. His 
eyes glow like live 
coals, his manner 
of greeting us has 
a gentle courtesy 
out of keeping with 
his patched abieh 
and bare feet. He 
holds a baby in his 
arms, who clutches 
his beard for pro- 
tection while staring at us. We have not talked a minute before the room 
begins to fill with interested auditors. Every woman has a child in arms, and 
presses to the front; the few men skulk in the rear of the crowd, and peer in 
at the door; the children fill up the chinks in the living wall. 

The picture is peculiar and impressive. Near the door, Miss Dunn, of New 
19 




A SU 



BOOTH IN THE CITY OF 



290 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



York, small in stature, with delicate features, dressed simpty in black, takes in 
every feature of the scene through grave, pitying eyes; at my side Miss Robertson, 
a native Kentuckian, whose Southern intonations sound strangely and sweetly 
familiar to me in this far- distant land, salutes each new-comer with a smile or 
word, and when the conversation opens, hearkens with eye as with ear. Mrs. 

Jamal, handsome 
and vivacious, ready 
with both the lan- 
guages in which the 
colloquy must be 
carried on, her izzar 
fallen back from her 
head, and the blue- 
flowered m e n d e e 1 
lifted from her face, 
is at my other hand. 
To the man, as a 
leader and a teacher 
among his people, 
my queries are ad- 
dressed: 

" Where was 
your home before 
you came to Jeru- 
salem ?" 

" In Arabia." 
"What brought 
you so far from it ?' ' 
' 1 We came as 
pilgrims, as Abra- 
ham of old, to the 
Land of Promise. 
"something i^ttxe better than beggars." Jerusalem is the 

City of the Great King. Our fathers builded it. It is our city." 
' ' How have you fared here ?" 

" Badly enough, as you see. We left a land where we were comfortable, and 
had enough to eat and to wear, to become something little better than beggars." 
' ' Was that wise ? Do you not regret it ?' ' 

' ' Not for a moment. We bear all hardships patiently, expecting a release 
from captivity. Weeping may endure for a night. Joy cometh in the morning."' 




THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



" You expect the Messiah to come before long — perhaps?" 
A gesture of amazement. 

1 ' Who does not ? The Deliverer will come to Zion. We are here to wait for 
Him." 

' * When will He come ?' ' 

He spreads out his hands in Oriental (and Hebraistic) fashion. 

' ' Ah ! who can tell ? We Arabians have three proverbs — ' * Who can tell 
when the rain will fall ? Who can foretell when a child will be born ? Who 
knoweth when Messiah will appear ?' ' 

Mrs. Jamal's face lights up archly; she takes a step forward and answers 
quickly: 

" But there are, in two of these cases, signs which we may read aright. 
When clouds gather, we say, The rain is at hand. When pain takes hold of a 
woman, she knows that her hour is at hand. Do you, who watch and expect, see 
no signs that the day of the Lord is at hand ?" 

" We believe that we do. I name but one. Houses are rising within and 
upon Jeremiah's measuring-line — ' from the tower of Hananeel unto the gate of 
the corner, and upon the Hill Gareb and compassing about to Goath.' Have 
you not read that ' the whole valley of the dead bodies, and of the ashes and all 
the fields unto the brook of Kidron unto the corner of the horse-gate toward the 
East shall be holy unto the Lord ' — that is, a part of the holy city ? And beyond 
the Jaffa gate, behold houses upon houses, building, building continually. It is 
written that there shall be one great beautiful city stretching from Jerusalem even 
unto Jaffa." 

His air is that of an inspired seer, and he piles word upon word breathlessly. 
A low chorus of what sounds like "Amen !" arises from the listening women. 
One kisses her baby convulsively and begins to sob. Tears are on other 
cheeks. 

" Ask him" — I request of Mrs. Jamal — "where he has read the prophecy 
about the line of houses from Jerusalem to Jaffa ?' ' 

" In our sacred books," is the reply. " Not in the Scriptures that the lady 
knows. ' ' 

" Will Messiah be born as child, or as a man ?" 

" He will come as a King, descending from heaven, and clothed with majesty 
and, as we believe, very soon." 

"Will your children probably see Him?" 

A sudden look at the unconscious infant, who still plays with the father's 
matted beard, a closer clasping of the little form, and he shows us a face from 
which the light of holy exaltation has faded into quiet resignation. 

" Who can know that ? God's ways and God's times are past finding out." 



292 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



A woman breaks in excitedly here. Mrs. Jamal turns to listen kindly and 
answers gently: 

" She says that it must be that God will not let them cry ' How long? how 
long ?- forever. And that they are weary, weary, weary with waiting ! " 

" Will the Temple be restored in all its beauty and given to the Jews ?" is my 
last question. 

" Surely yes — for thus it is written, and God keeps His word." 
In one of the huts a woman is dying of consumption, a huddle of rags all 
that shields her worn body from the damp earth. The missionaries have brought 

her clean clothing and nourishing broth. In another is 
a baby but three days old, for whom the} T have flannels 
and slips and petticoats. With them they leave a 
leaflet containing a hymn translated into Hebrew. 

A man, with long curls, and a beard cut in accord- 
ance with the prohibition — "Ye shall not round the 
corners of 3^our heads, neither shalt thou mar the cor- 
ners of thy beard," clothed in a rusty velveteen gab- 
erdine, a tall cap, edged with a strip of mangy fur upon 
his head, and a most disreputable bundle in his hand, 
stops to stare at us as we quit the wretched home of 
mother and child. He is to American eyes a villainous 
looking tramp, but Miss Robertson touches me appre- 
hensively: 

" He is one of their priests ! and will, I am sure, 
question the poor woman sharply as to what I said te 
her. He will certainly take the leaflet away from her, 
should he see it." 

Glancing over our shoulders we see him enter the 
hovel, no doubt with the intention she has indicated. 
The good done in this unpromising field by these devoted women is incalculable 
by any system of human statistics. Walking meekly and unobtrusively in the 
footsteps of the Master, in sight of the hill upon which He died, they have but one 
rule of action. "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might," 
when the doing is to succor the oppressed, feed the hungry and minister to the 
sick. Their parish, their vineyard, their world is the scene before us; their 
recompense will be given in the day when the Lord of those servants shall come 
and reckon with them. 

There lies open before me, as I write, a printed official report signed by Dr. 
Selah Merrill, then consul at Jerusalem, of the present condition of the Jews in 
Palestine, from which I am permitted to glean certain fact? regretting, in con- 
densing the story, that I have not room to copy it in full. 




'A VILLAINOUS-LOOKING 
TRAMP. ' ' 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



2 93 



According to this able archaeologist and historian, in 1882-83 there was a 
sudden influx of foreign Jews into this country, so large that, as many readers 
may recollect, the attention of the Christian world was attracted to what might be 
the fulfilment of prophecies pointing to the literal return of the scattered tribes to 
the former home of the race. Dr. Merrill accounts for the movement by the rail- 
road ( 1 boom ' ' resulting in the construction of the line from Jaffa to Jerusalem, 
Many came to look over the ground and to confirm or dissipate the belief that 
money could be made by the purchase and sale of real estate. Much land 
exchanged hands during this period of excitement. Of the multitude of Israelites 
who then visited the Holy Land, a fair proportion remained. Dr. Merrill estimates 
the number here now at from forty-two to forty-three thousand. 

Iu July, 1 89 1, the Turkish Government forbade the immigration of Russian 
Jews into Palestine, and land went down one-third in price. The late consul adds 
that the immigrants are almost entirely of the lower and poorer classes. Well-to-do 
Jews prefer to live in rich towns, seeking centres of trade. As a race, they are 
notoriously non-agricultural. Of four hundred and thirty-nine families belonging 
to the thirteen colonies of Jews established at a comparatively recent date in the 
Holy Land, two hundred and fifty-five are beneficiaries of the Rothschilds, and, 
practically, semi-paupers. Rothschild has built model lodging-houses overlooking 
the Valley of Jehoshaphat and the Pool and Village of Siloam, and besides giving 
them house-rent and paying water-rates and synagogue-tithes, allows each person 
a fixed sum per month for maintenance. The like provisions are made with regard 
to the farm-houses erected upon tracts of arable land in various parts of Palestine, 
where it is alleged (although on this head I have no data from Dr. Merrill to work 
upon) that the colonists hire the neighboring fellaheen to do the work at extremely 
low prices, and do not themselves put the hand io the plough. 

"In a word " — thus the ex-consul sums up the case — " Palestine is not ready 
for the Jews, and the Jews are not ready for Palestine." 



CHAPTER XXXIII. 



THE CHURCH OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE. 

GHK De Credo blood is in fullest flow in the veins of the woman we 
know as Mrs. Sharpe when the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is 
spoken of. She actually wept yesterday in confiding to me the pain 
she feels at hearing so many wise and good people express doubts as 
to the authenticity of the Church's traditions with regard to it. 

"As I said to-day to my doctor, some regard should be paid to what the 
church has held for all these centuries. It is bewildering to listen to his talk of 
the improbability of this and the impossibility of that having happened there. 
What do / care about the discovery of a new old wall of the city, which proves 
that the crucifixion could not have taken place where the saints of all ages have 
believed that it did ? And think what a crash to the faith of Catholic and Greek 
Christians if the public should come to doubt all the lovely things we are told 
while in the darling old Church ! The free-thinking of this so-called Christian 
age is enough to curdle the blood in a pious heart. For my part, I agree with dear 
old Bishop Cheeseman, who urges how much better it is to cling to what is sanc- 
tioned by the belief of centuries than to lend ear to a theory not yet fifty years old. 
As to archaeology and explorations and excavations and such modern innovations, 
I have no patience with them. They are so man}^ forms of unbelief — downright 
Sadduceeism, I call them." 

The ill-matched pair, have by now, ceased to amuse us, and with inward 
groanings of spirit we see the approach of the husband while we are standing over 
the flat stone let into the quadrangle just without the entrance of the church. 
The symbol known as ' ' the Jerusalem Cross, ' ' said to have been used as the badge 
of the Crusaders by the order of Godfrey of Bouillon, is cut deep into the gray 
slab; all that was mortal of the gallant warrior, made by the decree of his peers, 
King of Jerusalem, lies under it. We have our own and especial reasons for 
reverencing the memory of the Christian hero, reasons that have drawn us to the 
place more strongly than churchly legends, and we are disposed to stiffen up at 
the prospective intrusion upon our musings. 

To our surprise, the usually rampant doubter touches his clerical broad brim 
in respectful silence, and stands beside us, looking down upon stone and sunken 
cross, until I am moved to address him: j 
"I hope that Mrs. Sharpe is well to-day ?" 

(294) 



296 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



" Quite well, thank you," still with the gentle gravity that is to us uncharac- 
teristic. " She is in there " — ducking his red head sideways at the church — and, 
after a pause — " Praying in the ' Chapel of the Finding of the Cross.' " 

It is an awkward moment, no suitable comment occurring to either of the 
auditors. He resumes, presently, as gently as before: 

' ' I need not say that all the monkish superstitions that bring large revenues 
to this church are indescribabty abhorrent to me. But having expressed this, and 
more than once, to my excellent wife, and failing to bring her to my way of 
thinking, I cannot pursue the subject. I can ridicule old wives' fables touching 
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Peter, James and John. Perhaps I lose my temper 
when the fable is too grotesque. When the subject thus touched has to do with 
the death and burial of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ" — uncovering his 
head in pronouncing the words — "I am dumb. Either the imposture is too 
blasphemous to be dealt with by human speech, or the faith of those who believe 
this to be the scene of the events I have referred to is too holy to be spoken of 
lightly. When Mrs. Sharpe told me of her desire to spend an hour in devotion 
in the chapel below, I raised no objection. I simply answered, ' Very well, my 
dear. You will find me outside when you are ready.' I more than suspect " — a 
queer carroty flush mantling the Scotch cheek-bones — "that the sweet soul is 
now engaged in prayer that my eyes may be opened to see the truth, as it is 
apparent to her. ' ' 

With a deepening of respect for a good, if testy, man, and more real liking 
than we had imagined we could ever feel for him in any circumstances, we enter 
the ancient edifice. 

Those indefatigable church -builders, the Crusaders, remodeled it in the 
twelfth century, but there was a sanctuary of some kind here in the fourth, a 
church raised by Constantine in commemoration of the discovery of his mother 
Helena of what she assumed was the True Cross. As the house in which believers 
have worshiped for almost fifteen hundred years, it merits reverential mention. 
We try to keep this in mind and the lesson learned from the usually hypercritical 
divine just now, as we are arrested every few paces to note this or that holy 
place. 

The stone upon which the Saviour's body lay when anointed for the tomb is 
near the spot where the Maries stood while men performed the last, sad office, and 
further away, right under the immense dome of the church, is the so-called Holy 
Sepulchre. The chapel covering it is tawdry with red marble, gilding and poor 
paintings. Ever-burning lamps swing from cornice and pillar. We slip off our 
rubber shoes before we are permitted to enter, lest common soil be carried into the 
sacred place. In the ante-room to the sepulchre we are shown a rough stone, 
said to be a piece of that rolled from the door of the tomb by the angels; the place 



THE FlyAG OF THE ORIENT. 



297 



where they stood at the disciples' visit is also pointed out. Stooping low, we pass 
into a small recess — it cannot be called a room — all ablaze with red, yellow and 
green lights. There must be between forty and fifty of these lamps, with shades 

i : — 1 " ^ ~ " ~th tup n 




CHURCH OF HOLY SEPULCHRE, COURT- YARD AND ENTRANCE, SHOWING TOMB OF 

GODFREY OF BOUILLON. 



of different colors, illumining a marble altar, six feet long, three wide, and two 
high, set out with the customary altar- furniture, gold vessels, artificial flowers and 
lace-trimmed altar-cloths. 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



"This," pronounces David in subdued accents, "is said by tradition to be 
the tomb of Christ, our Lord." 

We linger before it for a respectful minute, and at our movement to retire he 
continues in the same key, " You will please back out !" 

His innocent employment of the undignified phrase does not provoke a smile } 
but it heightens the incongruity of which we have been disagreeably conscious 
from the instant of our entrance into the chapel. The necessity of stooping 
as we retreat backwards, and the dragoman's care of my head lest I should 
strike it against the top of the low doorway, are a further strain upon the grave 
decorum we would maintain out of respect to the name, if not the fact of the 
hory spot. 

Outside the Chapel of the Angels we are stopped to look at the " Fire-hole." 
Perhaps we have heard of it before, but as we listen now the singular tale seems 
new and incredible on the verge of the twentieth century. A part of the Easter 
ceremonies of the Greek Church, four hundred years ago— how much earlier we 
dc not know — was the descent of a dove upon the Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre, 
after which the patriarch, waiting in the chamber of the tomb and invisible to the 
crowd without, passed a lighted torch through the fire-hole to a priest on the 
other side. His first care was to light a candle to be sent by a swift horseman to the 
Church in Bethlehem, and then the multitude pressed upon him, every one with a 
taper to be ignited at the sacred torch. 

"And this is really done still !" we ejaculate. 

' ' The dove does not appear, but the holy fire descends at the Greek Easter, 
even- year." 

"And people still believe that the fire comes down from heaven ?" 

An English-speaking monk, in passing, catches the words. 

"And why not ?' ' he interrogates drily, rather than fiercely. "All things are 
possible with God." 

Discussion in the circumstances would be the height of indiscretion. Again 
taking a hint from Dr. Sharpe's latest lesson, we pass on toward the stairs con- 
ducting to the subterranean Chapel of St. Helena. On the way, our notice is 
called to a dumpy column rising from the marble pavement. I say " column " 
for want of a fitter word, but it looks more like a raised register or radiator than 
a monument, and is said to cover the exact centre of the earth. 

' ' Reference is made by those who believe this to Ezekiel, fifth chapter and 
fifth verse " (David is conscientiously prudent here). "'This is Jerusalem; I 
have set it in the midst of the nations and the countries that are round about 
her.' " 

' ' That says nothing of this particular spot. There was nothing here then, 
to designate it, that we have ever heard of." 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



301 



" Quite so, sir. This is also believed to mark the hole out of which the 
Almighty took the earth for making Adam." 
" What do you think of that story ? ' ' 

" In my opinion, Adam was never here, sir; but I am not a scholar." 

Alcides, bold in the spirit of advanced Young America, does " not take much 
^tock in Constantine. He was probably a charlatan in religion, as in statecraft, 
,Cf he ever had the vision of the Cross in the sky and the motto, 'hi hoc vincesj 
he turned it cleverly to his own account," etc. 

I hearken to the fulmination, seated upon a narrow marble bench let into the 
wall near the top of the steps leading to the Chapel of the Findings of the Cross, 
By leaning upon the sill of a small square window T at a con- 
venient distance above the bench I can look down into a dim 
cellar, like a tank, badly lighted by two candles set upon what 
I presently make out to be an altar. Somewhere down there 
Mrs. Sharpe is kneeling and wrestling in prayer for her hus- 
band's soul. Here, if we heed tradition, sat the aged Empress 
Helena in the year 326 A. D., and watched the excavations 
going on at her order, in quest of the True Cross. She had 
dreamed before setting out upon her pilgrimage to Jerusalem, 
where this precious relic would be found. 

I interrupt the recital here : 

1 ' She could hardly have sat upon this bench and looked 
through this window, for they are a part of the church which 
was built to commemorate 1 the Invention ' — in ecclesiastical 
phraseology — ' of this very Cross.' " 

" Invention isn't bad in the connection ! " Alcides slips 
in an " aside." 

The narration proceeds. Three crosses were dug out of 
the hole down into which I am gazing, and the Empress, the 
shrewd mother of a shrewder son, bethought herself of a test 
that should reveal the right relic. A Christian woman of rank lay on her death- 
bed in Jerusalem. The three exhumed crosses were borne into her room, and 
by touching one of them she was healed. This is the one and only ground, so 
far as we have been able to discover, for the belief that the Church of the Holy 
Sepulchre rises above the place of crucifixion, burial and ascension of our L,ord, 
unless we are to admit the evidence of a church historian of that day who ascribes 
the building of the church to Constantine, who had of himself discovered the site 
of the Sepulchre. 

When we consider the improbability that the crosses upon which three Jew- 
ish peasants, criminals in the eye of the Roman authorities, would be preserved 




A MEANER EIGURE. 



302 THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 

in any way after they had served their ignominious end ; the greater improba- 
bility that they were buried near the sepulchre of the Nazarene ; when we take 
into account the three centuries during which they thus lay concealed from the 
knowledge of mankind, and then, the manner of the disinterment, one grows 
thoughtful and distrustful. The students of God's Word, who in trying to identify 
any locality in or near Jerusalem with the scene of our Lord's crucifixion " without 

the gate," have 
more than one dis- 
crepancy to confirm 
them in the belief 
that this venerable 
church does not 
cover the spot. 

Vespers are 
singing or intoning 
in the Chapel of St. 
Helena while we 
loiter in this corner. 
Much visiting of 
churches has ac- 
customed our 
senses, and not un- 
pleasantly, to the 
throbbing echoes 
awakened in aisle 
and dome by re- 
sponsive chanting 
and the organ ac- 
companiment. We 
rather like the 

smell of good incense, and the aesthetic sense is gratified by the " dim religious 
light ' ' produced by the blending of lamp-rays and the faint daylight that finds 
its way through the stained glass windows. 

Just at present we are in no mood for enjoying aesthetic effects. Even Mrs. 
Sharpe, as Miss De Credo, must have supped her fill of superstition and churchly 
tradition in her frequent visits to the sanctuary reared by the Crusaders. They 
believed, to the bloody death, in the authenticity of the story that makes the 
gorgeous altar in the low-ceiled chamber over yonder the tomb from which our 
Lord arose upon that first Easter morning. From the depths of aching hearts we 
wish that we could credit it, and — say one-tenth of— the other tales poured into 




THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



303 



our ears with volubility acquired by continual practice. We look the sacristan 
who has us in tow steadfastly in the eyes for sign of faltering or embarrassment, 
as he runs off legend after legend as an auctioneer extols his wares. 

Golgotha has three chapels attached to it, each erected by a different sect of 
Christians. It is even harder to believe in than in the sepulchre, and is yet more 
effectually disguised by precious metals and marbles. The square opening above 
the socket in the rock in which the foot of the Cross is reputed to have been sunk, 
is lined and bound with silver. Scarcely six feet away, is what looks like a ven- 
tilator of open brass- work that — upon payment of a fee — is slid aside to show a 




A WEDDING PROCESSION. 



fissure in a rock, said to have been made by the earthquake that rent the veil of 
the temple during the crucifixion. In close succession are exhibited with busi- 
ness-like promptness the spot where Mary Magdalene fell upon her knees, ex- 
claiming " Rabboni ! " the grave of Joseph of Arimathea ; the prison in which 
our Eord was detained until the Sanhedrim could be collected ; the tomb of Nico- 
demus, and of James the brother of John and son of Zebedee, who was killed by 
the sword in Herod's persecution of the early church ; the Pillar of Scourging; 
the place where the Roman soldiery parted the raiment among them, casting lots 
for the vesture ; the boughs in which the ram was entangled as a substitute for 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



Isaac, and the altar on which Abraham would have sacrificed his son ; the tomb 
of Adam in whose dust we are told the Cross was set up — and so many other 
notable places that I have not the heart to transcribe a list which could not but 
disgust the sensible reader, and pain the devout. 

We are driven, whether we will or not, to recollect at every new exhibition, 
Dr. Sharpe's allusion to the revenue drawn from this marvelous — I had almost 
written monstrous — collection of sacred curios, and to wonder, only, at the 

economic instinct 
that has gathered 
so many under the 
one domed roof of 
the Holy Sepulchre. 
Nor is it possible, 
being human, and 
readers of the Bible, 
that we should fail 
to remind ourselves 
and one another, in 
connection with the 
venders of rosaries, 
charms and photo- 
graphs without the 
church, and of paint- 
ed candles within ; 
of the riot raised by 
the craftsmen of 
Ephesus when the 
trade in silver 
shrines for Diana 
was threatened by 
" 1 DON ' T SEE WHY NOT -" Paul's preaching. 

The ablest scholars who have studied and written upon sacred history, agree 
in declaring that this cannot be the true Calvary ; that the site of the Church of 
the Holy Sepulchre never was within the city walls, and corresponds in no par- 
ticular with the description of the holy spot given by the Evangelists. The fact 
will never be admitted by those whose interest it is to encourage pilgrimages to 
the Mecca of Christendom. 

It is like a breath of purer, honester air when David again takes us in hand 
and conducts us into a side-room to see the sword and Jerusalem cross-badge worn 
by Godfrey of Bouillon. They are kept in a locked coffer and shown, upon the 




THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



305 



payment of a trifling sum, to the sacristan. The Syrian dragoman lifts the great 
weapon carefully, and lays it in Alcides's hand with : 

' ' There, sir, is the sword of your favorite hero. He must have been a great 
man in more ways than one, if he used that in battle." 

The badge is several inches long, and both it and the sword are evidently ex- 
tremely old. Our interest in them being merely a matter of hero-worship, we 
do not tread upon, to 
us, debatable ground 
in choosing to be- 
lieve them genuine 
relics of the stout- 
hearted, stainless 
knight of St. John. 

At the head of 
the steps leading into 
the dismal Chapel of 
the Invention of the 
Cross, sits an old 
man with a noble 
head and a white 
beard, such as we 
see in pictures of 
Abraham. He is 
turbaned, and wears 
the brown-and-white 
abieh of the fella- 
heen. He raises his 
face at sound of our 
footsteps, and we see 
that he is blind. 

1 1 For the love of God and for holy charity ! ' ' 
tin cup. 

1 1 A professional beggar, ' ' I remark. ' ' He might be King Lear, or Belisarius, 
or Homer. Get his story, if you can, — please?" 

He tells it readily, but not officiously. According to it he is a farmer from 
Ophrah. 

" If the Captain will look up 1 Samuel, xiii. 17, when he gets back to the 
hotel," murmurs David aside and parenthetically. 

While on a visit to Jerusalem twelve years ago, he went to sleep one night, 
well, and, awakening next morning could not open his eyes, " for a great swelling 
20 




WAYSIDE) BEGGARS. 

he quavers, holding out a 



306 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



which made his head so large " — describing an area about it with his hand. He 
went to a physician who put something into his eyes that burned like fire, or boil- 
ing water, and from that time he has been totally blind, unable to tell day from 
night. A blind man cannot work in the fields or tend cattle, or thresh grain, so 
he came to this city and makes a living by begging. He has children who give 
him a home where he may sleep at night — but they are poor — vers' poor — and he 
will not be a burden to them. Being a Christian, he is allowed to sit here and ask 
alms of those who come to pray, or to see the church. Sometimes, in the season 
of visitors or at Christmas and Easter, he makes as much as four piastres a day 
(fifteen cents of our money), sometimes he makes but two piastres, sometimes but 
half a piastre, — sometimes but eight paras — (the lowest in value of Syrian coins, 
being many times less than a cent) . 

David is still translating when Mrs. Sharpe comes up the steps, rising oddly 
out of the darkness, first, her white face, then her hands, becoming visible against 
the black background and her black dress. She stops to listen, and we see that 
her eyes are large with tears, her face pure and solemn, for all the babyish round- 
ness and softness it will never outgrow. 

"And what do you think, then, of a heavenly Father who lets you go to bed 
hungry ?" she interpolates as the last pitiful sum is named. 

"I go to sleep and trust Him for to-morrow," the man makes answer in 
simplicity that sounds sincere. 

" Tell him that is right," Mrs. Sharpe instructed David — " and never, never 
to doubt Him. Tell him too ; how sorry / am that he must sit here all day long in 
the darkness and where it is so damp, and ask him to pray for me to-night." 

She has dropped two francs into the tin cup, and hurries away to avoid his 
thanks. 

" I believe that is a good woman," utters David, peering into the cup where 
the silver shines bright upon a layer of copper coins. Then, to the beggar, — 
" You have there two francs. When you buy your supper, see that you do not 
pass them off for pennies. And don't forget to pray for the lad} 7 ." 

A second beggar sits at the head of still another staircase, and here, too, the 
sunshine never falls. He is a meaner figure than that we have just left, but is made 
picturesque by a pretty little girl, not more than eight years of age, who leans 
against his knee and regards us with big, solemnly pathetic eyes. The} 7 have been 
here all da} 7 and come ever} 7 day in the week, the child leading him from his home 
outside of the city walls to his place upon the steps about eleven o'clock in the 
day, few tourists visiting the church before that hour. The child looks like a 
plant that has grown in a cellar, pale and slight to fragility, so poor of blood that 
she shivers all over. now and then, under her thin cotton gown. Her brown feet 
are bare, and her paleness is made more striking by a black shawl worn over her 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



307 



head. Her father was blinded by a sunstroke while working in the fields before 
she was born, and has no business but beggary. 

' ' I have been told that every professional beggar in Jerusalem would be cared 
for by the convents and other religious organizations if he would let them 
help him," I say to David when we are out of the church and climbing Chris- 
tian Street. 

" There are a great many of them, madam, and as they must be supported by 
charity, having no work to do, and knowing no trade of any sort, they are freer 
to come and go when they beg for themselves from anybody who happens along, 
than if they had to obey rules and accommodate themselves to certain hours, and 
all that. To them, their way of living is as respectable as to ask alms of a 
religious society. They may be wrong, but that is the way they feel about it." 

The idea is novel — and there may be something in it — in Jerusalem. The 
poverty of means and of resources prevailing among the lower classes here is patent 
and pitiable. The afternoon is fine and cold, and we walk from one side of the 
city to the other before returning to the hotel — not an arduous undertaking, 
the entire circumference of the walls being less than three miles. We are hurry- 
ing somewhat, in order to get back in season for dinner when, for the second 
time to-day, we encounter Dr. and Mrs. Sharpe. Whereas we were glad of the 
opportunity afforded by a former meeting to modify a harsh judgment, we wish 
now that we had taken another turning of the narrow thoroughfare in which 
we find them. For the husband's hair bristles pugnaciously, and the wife has 
on her most amiably -obstinate expression. 

" I don't see why not, doctor dear," we hear in nearing them, " What more 
natural than that He might have pointed to that very stone in speaking the words, 
and devout men would be sure to treasure it piously afterward." 

4 * Of all the sacrilegious enormities, — ' ' splutters her spouse, and we quicken our 
speed to get out of hearing. 

The cause of dispute is known to us, having been designated by Dr. Merrill in 
one of our earlier walks about Jerusalem. It is a time-stained stone built into the 
wall of a filthy cross-street, a round, common-looking fragment, with a hole in it, 
an aperture enlarged and discolored by the kisses of devotees. The relic is 
believed by others besides Mrs. Sharpe to be ' ' the stone that would have cried 
out," had " the whole multitude of the disciples rejoicing and praising God with a 
loud voice," have held their peace in the Master's triumphal progress into the City. 

That the appeal of the Pharisees to Him to silence the acclamations, and the 
Lord's reply are plainly said to have been spoken at the descent of the Mount of 
Olives, avails nothing with those who make the word of God of none effect 
through their traditions. 

Can human effrontery and the credulity of superstition go further than this ? 



CHAPTER XXXIV. 



TO MAR SABA. 

OHH palankeen has been made ready instead of a horse, for my use in 
the journey from Jerusalem to Mar Saba, said to be the oldest convent 
in the world. I acquiesce the more willingly in the arrangement that 
the memory of a succession of ' 1 Jerusalem ponies ' ' does not incline 
me toward the experiment of undertaking a long ride upon what I heard an Eng- 
lishman describe in a Christmas talk in Bishop Gobat's school on Mount Zion, as 
"that most unhasty beast, the ass." I do not take kindly to the donkey nor, to 
judge from his behavior when honored by bearing my weight, does he to me. 

Wise David demurs when a horse ; a slow and amiable creature and gentle of 
motion, is proposed. The way is steep and rough, he represents, and much time 
would be lost by a certain traveler's habit of alighting to walk up or down par-, 
ticularly dizzy heights. The mules and donkeys are as sure-footed as cats from 
long training, and madame has faith in her muleteers. Madame, growing indo- 
lent, and tnaybe a trifle weary in nearing the end of her many and varied journey- 
ings, seconds the motion. 

We leave the Jaffa gate at noon of a lovely day that has in it a promise 
of spring to the bare earth. Already pale purple and bright yellow blossoms 
show bare heads above the withered turf on sunny terraces, and in sheltered nooks 
looking southward. As we wind below the bluffs beyond Siloam, built up with 
the mean huts of the leper settlement, we see upon the right, the Potter's Field, 
or Aceldama, in which, it is said, Judas hanged himself. A tree that must be 
nearly, if not quite, fifty years of age, is pointed out as that which refused to bear 
the traitor's weight. By now, we have learned to laugh at such solemn absurdi- 
ties, and, a more difficult undertaking, not to let a manifest impossibility blind us 
to what may be true and what is altogether reasonable. 

A little further on we meet a party of a dozen women laden with enormous 
bundles of the dried furze or low thorny growth which serves them for kindling 
wood, and is, in mild weather, the only fuel used by many of the poorer peasantry. 
They resemble nothing else so much as ants plodding along under burdens many 
times larger than their own bodies, but this company is unusually merry, talking, 
laughing and shouting gayly to each other as they take the side of the road to 
give us the middle. One is really vers' pretty, bright-eyed, plump and light of 
foot, although she carries, besides her great bunch of prickly stuff, a baby slung 

(309) 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



between her shoulders in such a bag as we bought from " Martha of Bethany." 
She does not stoop under the load, and glances laughingty in at the window of the 
palankeen from the stony bank that brings her face on a level with mine, calling 
out something, to which David replies good-humoredly. 

' ' What did she say to me ? " I inquire in natural curiosity. 
"That you are blessed among women," is the translation given tome, but 
presently Massoud appears at my side, and Alcides supplies the rest of the young 
mother's salutation. 

" She asked if you wouldn't get down and give her a ride. Human nature 

on one side of the world 
doesn't differ much 
from human nature on 
the other." 

I comfort myself 
by the belief that the 
brown beauty's chal- 
lenge was mere banter. 
The tone was too 
cheery, and her smile 
too free for envy. 

The route is all 
new to us, and after 
passing the fields out- 
lying the city of Jeru- 
salem, we decide that 
we have seen no more 
desolate and forbid- 
ding country. Except 
for a few scattered 
patches of vegetables 
cultivated in the close 
neighborhood of what 
are water-courses for a few months of the year, and an occasional olive-grove, 
also in the low grounds, not a glimpse of green blesses eyes pained by dwelling 
upon gray rocks and livid hillsides. For a while, our course lies in the pebbly 
bed of the Brook Kidron, now as dry as dust, and glaringly white. Then 
we begin to climb by a narrow, twisting path, where the horses walk in single file 
and the palankeen, scraping naked rocks upon one side, overlooks, upon the other, 
sheer precipices from fifty to two hundred feet deep. Looking forward, I am 
often bewildered to guess where, amid the heaps of stones and the criss-crossing 




HER PEOPLE. 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



3" 



of projections that seem to close up the route, my faithful mules can make their 
way, but they do not slip once, even when their small, nimble hoofs displace 
loose pebbles and larger stones, and send them clattering into lower ravines. 

There is so little to amuse me and we pass so few notable points, (" places 9i 
there are none) that I fall to watching a woman with a mass of something green 
upon her head, walking on the hillside in a straight line in the same direction 
with ourselves. As the route she holds with something of the crow's instinct in 
determining the shortest distance between two given places, brings her near 
enough for me to see her more plainly, I perceive that she wears a dark blue cot- 
ton tunic, reaching to her ankles, which, like Maud Muller's, are " bare and 
brown " as well as her feet. The tunic, or underdress, has wide flowing sleeves; 
over it is a long sleeveless jacket of red woolen stuff; an embroidered and fringed 
veil, once white, now dirty, drapes her head, and one end is bound about her 
burden which is composed of the refuse leaves of cabbage and cauliflower. With- 
out casting a look at our part}^, she holds on her way, never quickening or slack- 
ening her fleet walk, down hills and across torrent beds, springing from crag to 
crag like a chamois, until I see her near a gap in a ledge hardly wide enough, 
apparently, to afford a foothold to a mountain-goat. The shelf of rock follows the 
face of a bare granite shoulder of the mountain towering above us until the whole 
valley is darkened by the shadow. The gap has been made by a rush of winter 
rain, or by a landslide, and looks to be about four feet wide, As the girl ap- 
proaches it, she puts up one hand to steady the load upon her head, and, without 
stay or falter, leaps across, landing erect upon the farther side, then passes on as 
fleetly as before. We have never seen another woman walk so gracefully and 
fast, and call upon David to find out who she is and upon what errand she is 
bound. 

The dragoman gallops forward and intercepts her where his practised eye has 
seen that she must keep our path for a while, and we see them talking together fo? 
a hundred yards or so, the girl actually lessening her speed to keep back with Der- 
vish's walk. Next, both have stopped to wait for Serkeese who is trotting along 
in the gravelly " bottom," atop of hampers and luncheon-tent. When palankeen 
and Massoud come up with them, the woman is still walking beside the mounted 
dragoman, devouring a loaf of bread drawn from Serkeese' s stores, as incurious 
and impassive as ever. David falls back to my side and narrates: 

The young woman went to Jerusalem this morning to buy some cloth in the 
name of her tribe, only to be refused credit by the merchant to whom she was sent. 
She had no money to buy food, and picked up the refuse greens in the market- 
place. Breakfastless and luncheonless, she set her face homeward and has now 
walked more than fifteen miles since daybreak. While he speaks, she looks back 
to wave her hand, and disappears around a hill. From the parting of our ways, 



312 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



we, by-and-by, see her swiftly climbing the long breast of the hill, near the sum- 
mit of which is a cluster of black tents, with moving figures before them. 

' ' I hope she will not get a beating from her people for her bad luck in not 
buying the cloth," says David, solicitously — and when we admire her strength 
and staying power — " oh, she is used to walking all day, and to fasting." 

Wilder and gloomier grows the way, but now we are in a veritable road, 
winding up and along the heights, a low parapet of loosely-laid stones guarding 




"THE ANCIENT EDIFICE." 



it upon the outer edge. The sun still sleeps upon the heads of the gray and red- 
dish mountains, but in the depths of the defiles night is settling. This is the 
wilderness in which John the Baptist spent his novitiate, these are the deserts in 
which he "grew and waxed strong in spirit, till the day of his showing unto 
Israel." 

"And the same John had his raiment of camel's hair, and a leathern girdle 
about his loins, and his meat was locusts and wild honey." 

The rude figure thus portrayed harmonizes perfectly with the naked gorges 
where not a leaf of herbage or blade of grass clings to sides honey-combed with 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



313 



caves. These natural dens and grottos were, before the forerunner of our Eord 
sought their awful solitudes, the resort of fanatics and world-weary hermits. In 
the early ages of the Christian church, literally thousands of refugees from perse- 
cution, and men sickened out by the corruptions of society, fled to the ' ' Wilderness 
of Judea, ' ' and dug cells in the cliffs in which to hide themselves for prayer and 
sacred meditations and fastings innumerable. About 460 A. D., the leading 
spirit of the strange colony, a Greek hermit by the name of Sabas, established at 
the head of the gorge the monastery that bears his name. In time, repeated 

pit- 




TOWER OF JUSTINIAN AT MAR SABA. 



attacks from predatory bands, and, early in the seventh century, a terrible invasion 
of the Persians in which 3000 monks and anchorites are said to have been massa- 
cred, — made it necessary to fortify the retreat, and it became almost impregnable. 

The sun is near the horizon as we gain a plateau behind the ancient edifice 
which hangs dizzily over the "Valley of Fire," four hundred feet below the 
foundations laid in the solid rock. We do not ask for admittance. By an inviol- 
able law of the establishment, no woman can pass the outermost gate, and, while, 



3H 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



in a detached tower, removed by some fifty feet from the forbidden precincts, 
shelter and food would be given me upon application, I prefer the luxurious inde 
pendence of our camp. The evening is cloudless and bland, and the moon in her 
second quarter lights up the tall tower erected by Justinian, the grim walls and the 
belfry, from which the hours chime out sweet and startlingly clear in the rarefied 
air. Seated, as usual, in the tent-door, we hearken to stories of the stringent 
austerities practiced by the holy brotherhood. They eat no meat, and are allowed 
one egg apiece on Sunda}^, black bread, vegetables, a scanty allowance of fruit 
and sour wine forming their diet the year around. There are seven services in 
the twenty-four hours, the first long before daylight, and, the vows once taken, 
the monks seldom quit the convent upon any errand. 

Yet the loftiest mountain of the range separating them from the world of 
active labor is believed to be the Hill of the Scapegoat, down which the hapless 
animal, bearing upon his head the iniquities of the people, was thrown yearly by 
the hand of the " fit man " who had led him into the wilderness. 

I think of the ceremony and its significance as, awakened in the dense dark- 
ness of a winter morning at four o'clock by the vibrant call of the bells to prayer, 
I put out my hand for the extra blanket laid across the foot of my bed, and, nest- 
ling down in the warm comfortableness of my nest, picture the shivering monks 
kneeling for two long hours upon the stone floor intoning prayers to Him who, 
like as a Father pitieth His children, and has given them all things richly to 
enjoy. 




(315) 



CHAPTER XXXV. 



AT MAR SABA. 

OHKRK is a profundity of silence that hinders sleep. I have never appre- 
ciated the fact more sensibly than in the early hours of the new day 
we greet from the bald mountain-top on which our camp is pitched 
at Mar Saba. The world is in a dead swoon. From the time the 
bells chime out for the first service, until I hear the shuffle of the muleteers' bare 

feet upon the rock as they feed their animals, and the subdued clatter of pan and 

f — I — »— — — 1 — ■ " 




"in silencb as sullen.'* 



dish in the kitchen-tent testify that John is getting ready to feed us, the beating 
of my own heart is absolutely the only sound I hear. 

We have finished breakfast before we have any tokens that there are other 
living things besides ourselves in the vast solitude. Then the interruption is 

(316) 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



317 



sudden and peculiar. Alcides is filling his fountain-pen, and I am unscrewing 
mine to see if it also needs attention, when right between us fly two birds, tied 
together by a leash that, getting entangled about Alcides 's legs, checks their flight. 
Around the corner of the nearest tent comes David in pursuit, and at his heels 
the more deliberate figure of a Bedouin, who looks on in apparent unconcern 
while the pretty 
creatures — a spe- 
cies of orange- 
and-black grackle 
unfamiliar to us 
— are captured. 

David has had 
an order from 
Lord Somebody, , 
an English or 
Scotch nobleman, 
who is a zealous 
ornithologist, for 
five hundred of 
these birds. As 
they are to be 
f o u n d nowhere 
except in this 
neighborhood, 
and about the 
southern shores 
of the Dead Sea, 
it is necessary to 
depute a native 
of the region to 
procure them, and 
our Bedouin 
friend has the 
commission. 

' ' He is a great 

cheat," subjoins the dragoman. "He wants me to pay him four shillings the 
pair, when he has snared them without difficulty in the valley down there at the 
bottom of the pass ! They are very tame, for the monks feed them there three 
times a day. He is a rascal who has no conscience whatever." 

While he grumbles, the birds, held tenderly between his stout hands, have 




HEI,D TENDERLY BETWEEN HIS STRONG HANDS. 



3i8 



THE FlyAG OF THE ORIENT. 



fastened upon his thumbs with all the strength of their little beaks. The feeding 
of them within the convent walls is one of the few human enjoyments vouchsafed 
to the brothers of Mar Saba. Other wild things — jackals, foxes and wolves — 
make friends with the recluses and have their stated times of feeding, regulated — 
as we are told, and it is possible with truth — by the chiming of the bells as they 
mark the hours of service. One's heart contracts with an odd physical pain in 

hearing of this 
phase of the 
starved, narrowed, 
belittling round of 
existence decreed by 
the leaders of these 
men's souls. 

The current of 
compassion is some- 
what changed by 
the appearance of 
a holy brother in 
the costume of the 
order who leaves 
the pale of sanctity, 
bearing to the pale- 
faced strangers, not 
the blessing and 
goo d- w ill of the 
community, but ro- 
saries, wooden forks 
and spoons, charms, 
walking-sticks and 
other traps for the 

SOME OF OUR VISITORS AT MAR SABA. CO ill ofuUWary 

heretics. He spreads his wares in sullen silence upon the rock, and in silence 
as sullen, stands looking down at them. The Bedouin ' ' cheat ' ' has drawn forth 
a long pipe from the folds of his abieh and smokes in tranquil contentment, 
sure of getting at least one-third of what he has asked for the half-domesticated 
grackles; his bare-legged son gapes at the display of "curios " lam turning over 
with uncovetous fingers, while the kodak gets the picture of a dark-visaged, bad- 
eyed fellow whom one would not choose to meet in one of the lonely ravines 
intersecting the Valley of Fire. In fact, as the dragoman informs us, this famous 
monastery is in our degenerate day a sort of penal settlement for monastic 




THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



3i9 



culprits. A member of the present fraternity is a notorious murderer from Port 
Said, his residence here being equivalent to imprisonment for life. Our merchant 
makes no more effort to sell his wares than if he were a young saleslady, brave in 
frizzettes and rhinestones, behind the counter of a New York emporium. If 
we want anything, we can take it; if not, leave it. His sulkiness increases 
rather than diminishes at David's courteous petition to be allowed, upon payment 
of a gratuity, to conduct Alcides into the convent. Gathering up his wares, the 




CONVENT SEEN EROM THE TABLE ROCK. 



brother restores them to his basket and stalks on ahead of us to the little table- 
land under the walls of the detached tower where I am to be left. 

' 1 If he is a specimen article, I do not envy you your visit," I say philosophi- 
cally to the favored pair, and settle myself for half an hour with my note-book. 

A folded rug makes the rock passably comfortable as a seat; the air is still 
and bracing, the sunshine delightful. I have written fast and satisfactorily for 
perhaps twenty minutes when a shadow strikes the page, and I raise my eyes. 
Two women, one middle-aged, one young, both clad in the dark blue gowns and 
veils of the Bedouins, have arisen as out of the rock, and are staring placidly at 
me. Behind the older woman a boy of five, or thereabouts, is peeping around her 



320 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



skirts. To test their mood and manners, I write on in serious disregard of their 
presence. The mother sinks to the ground and watches my fingers and pen, 
intent and mute. The girl lifts my glove and veil from the rock where I have 
laid them and examines them closely, and as I give no sign of noticing her occu- 
pation, goes on to finger the trimming upon my skirt, calling her mother's atten- 
tion to it in childish glee, then passing her fingers lightly up the cloth of the 
garment until she reaches my sleeves, picks at the braiding to see if it will come 
off. The whole proceeding is as inoffensive as if she were a baby, but I do object 
when she lays the tip of her finger upon my pen. At my gesture of disapproval 
the mother chides the meddler sharply, and pointing to the convent, evidently 




GRACKXES FEEDING IN COURT- YARD OF CONVENT. 



tells her that I am writing of, or drawing it. Thenceforward, two pairs of won- 
dering eyes follow the flowing ink, looking from the page to the building and back 
again until the exhibition is too much for my gravity. I sheathe the pen, close 
the book and laugh outright in their faces. After a slight start of surprise, they 
join in the merriment and fall to asking questions, not one of which I comprehend. 

I wear upon the front of my corsage a brilliant carnation, brought from Jeru- 
salem, and presently drop it into the girl's hand. She exclaims with delight, 
smells it, shows it proudly to her mother and finally hides it carefully in the 
bosom of her gown. Whatever glory of blossoming spring may bring to these 
sad-colored wilds, it is plain that a flower in winter is a phenomenon to the untutored 
daughter of the desert. She would be pretty but for the blue tattooing disfiguring 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



321 



her face. A line of polka spots runs clear across her forehead; another row defines 
the lower lip and three are "powdered " irregularly upon one cheek; a tattooed 
bracelet of Grecian pattern encircles each wrist and a square of the same design 
is upon the back of her right hand. Seeing me look at them, she laughs, pulls a 
long, cruel-looking needle from the front of her mother's gown, and goes on to 
show me how the 
marks have been 
made, and that her 
mother is the artist. 
When I shrink and 
signify that the op- 
eration must be 
painful and disa- 
greeable, she laughs 
again — the infant- 
ine gurgle one 
never hears in our 
country from a child 
over ten years old 
— and pulls up her 
loose sleeve to dis- 
play a more elabor- 
ate pattern sprawl- 
ing all the way to 
her elbow, the up- 
per part still raw 
from the needle. 

Two ragged 
children have joined 
the group, and their 
inquisitive forefin- 
gers are unpleas- 
antly familiar with 

my dress and portfolio. Twice the mother, at my appeal, boxes their ears, but 
without outcry or any sign that the blow is unwelcome, they return to the charge 
until I get up, collect my belongings and walk to the edge of the table-rock almost 
overhanging the courtyard of the monastery. Two black-robed friars are pacing 
a short balcony in the sunshine like bears in a cage; in the stillness I can hear 
the whirr and whiz of a hundred pairs of wings. The grackles are feeding upon 
the crumbs and grains flung from the front of the convent into the defile, and 
strewed upon the pavement of the inner courts. 
21 




ARRESTED UPON THE HALF-STEP. 



322 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



I have not shaken off my juvenile tormentors. One tugs at my skirt, another 
lifts the nap of the writing-case in my hand, a third, the biggest and dirtiest of 
the trio, and who rejoices in the only pair of shoes in the party (which, by the 
way, remind us of the Gibeonites' stratagem of "old shoes, and clouted, upon 
their feet ") pushes impudently to the front and demands " baksheesh." At this 
opportune moment I espy David and Alcides in the convoy of a lay brother 
descending an outer flight of stairs in going from one wing of the building to 
another, and call cheerily to them. The dragoman takes in the situation at a glance 
and shouts out something to my besetting neighbors that frees me from annoyance. 
They fall into the background and remain there until the return of my escort. 

The girl, who must be about sixteen, withdraws modestly, putting a corner 
of her coarse linen veil over her mouth at sight of two men, one young and pale- 
skinned. As I am determined to get a picture of her, all David's tact is brought 
into play to distract her attention and her mother's suspicion from the tell-tale 
kodak while this end is secured. She is actually in flight, arrested upon the half- 
step by the dragoman's call — an untamed creature as timid and wild as one of the 
hares we frightened out of a hollow yesterday. Her brothers and father are easily 
persuaded to stand for their portraits, but we see her no more, until we drop 
down, as it were, upon a group of black tents from a steep ridge two hours later, 
and recognize her as the centre of a knot of attentive listeners, enchained by the 
narrative of her morning 1 1 outing. ' ' 



CHAPTER XXXVI. 



HEBRON. 




MADE me great works; I builded me houses; I planted me vineyards; I 
made me gardens and parks, and I planted trees in them of all kinds of 
fruits; I made me pools of water to water therewith the wood that 
bringeth forth trees. ' ' 



So writes the Royal Preacher in the preface to the cry of ' ' Vanity of vanities ! 
all is vanity !' ' 

* ' So I was great, and increased more than all that were before me in Jerusa- 
lem," was no unfounded boast. 

The king who projected Solomon's Pools on the road to Hebron was so many 
generations in advance of his predecessors that, reasoning after the manner of 
men, we think that he might have excepted this gigantic enterprise from the sweep- 
ing condemnation passed upon the rest of his ' ' great works. ' ' The three immense 
tanks, to visit which we have left the direct road to Hebron, are lined with hewn 
stone, and in the opinion of wiser critics than my unlearned self, were constructed 
by Solomon's workmen to lead the living waters of adjacent springs to his pleasure- 
gardens, the " orchards of pomegranates, with pleasant fruits, cypress with spike- 
nard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon with all trees of frankincense, myrrh and 
aloes, with all the chief spices." 

The enumeration is plainly incongruous with the ruined reservoirs and the 
sereness of the surrounding fields at this season. The air "nips shrewdly," 
despite our heavy furs and the clear shining of the sun. Midway between the 
highway — the finest in the length and breadth of Palestine — and the Pools, is the 
sealed fountain " of Canticles, a square building covering the source of the 
waters led by an underground aqueduct to the lower reservoir. Close to the walls 
enclosing the great cisterns is another small building, with a domed roof, erected 
above a second well, reached by six or eight steps. The water is very cold, the 
steps are wet; it makes one shiver to look down into the dark cavity; but half a 
dozen women are passing down to fill water-skins, and then lugging them up. A 
water-skin or bottle is the whole hide of a goat tanned inside and out, sewed up 
lengthwise, and filled through the throat at the well. It is carried by means of 
two cords tied about the front and back feet, then passed across the forehead of the 
bearer, a fold of her veil keeping the rope from cutting into the skin. As the skin 
is always of a goat three-quarters or full-grown, some idea may be formed of the 

(323) 



3 2 4 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



weight of the burden. Two of the women with whom we speak at this well live 
a mile away, a third at Bethlehem, more than twice as far. 

We have regained the road when we catch sight of a man ploughing with a 
camel, the first instance of the kind that has come within our observation. The 
slight wooden plough and the undersized man contrast grotesquely with the un- 
wieldy brute, but the incident leads us to note the increasing fertility of the 
country. The grapes of Hebron are noted for size and flavor and clothe the 
upper terraces of the hillsides. Eower terraces are clothed with fruit trees, the 




"sealed fountain." 

fig and mulberry being the most abundant. There is a proportionate improve- 
ment in the looks of the husbandman. They are better clad, more alert in move- 
ment and really work as if a motive lay back of action. Women are busy in the 
fields, pulling up dried furze by the roots ; donkeys, laden out of sight except for 
their ambling legs and the tips of their noses, are met in droves ; camels, hitch- 
ing their clumsy bulk along under moving groves of a stouter shrub that perfume 
the air as they brush us in passing ; bearded Moslems with white turbans coiled 
about shaven heads, and (as we never fail to think, in contemplating the close fit 
of the head-gear) the few valuable papers they possess in the world snugly stowed 
away between the inner and outer linings of the turban, — are indices of thrift and 
& fair degree of prosperity. 



(325) 



326 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



Our guide points to a level stretch a mile away from the road, and we cease 
to note or consider anything modern. 

" Mamre ! " he utters, "and with this glass you can make out the old oak, 
the only tree of the kind in many miles. ' ' 

Not the oak, of course, although we talked last week in Jerusalem with a 
man who argued earnestly for the possibility of the existence, through thousands 

of years, of the tree 
under which Abra- 
ham 1 1 dwelt in the 
plain of Mamre and 
built there an altar 
unto the Lord." 
But we gaze in the 
direction indicated 
with intense and de- 
vout interest. From 
that plain or plateau 
Abram sallied forth, 
at the head of three 
hundred and eight- 
een servants born in 
his house, to over- 
take and defeat the 
kings who had taken 
captive his brother's 
son ; there he had 
the vision of the 
smoking furnace and 
burning lamp pass- 
ing between the 
' ' pieces ' ' laid in or- 
der for the sacrifice, 
and received the ex- 
ceeding great and 

precious promise of the son to be born of his old age ; there, from the home 
where life had grown intolerable, Hagar fled into the wilderness to be sent back 
by the Divine command; there, ''the Lord appeared unto Abraham in the 
plains of Mamre, as he sat in the tent-door in the heat of the day," and upon the 
next day from the elevated table-land, the anxious patriarch looked toward 
Sodom and Gomorrah to see " that the smoke of the country went up as the 




1111 ■ ■" 

WOMEN CARRYING WATER-SKINS AT SOLOMON'S POOrS. 



328 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



smoke of a furnace. ' ' The cave purchased from the children of Heth as a bury- 
ing-place where the dead wife could be buried out of the husband's sight, was in 
"the field of Machpelah before Mamre. The same is Hebron in the land of 
Canaan. ' ' 

Besides the Prince of Wales, his sons, and their attendants, including Dean 
Stanley, but five or six people, not Moslems, have ever been admitted to the in- 
terior of the Mosque of Abraham. Gen. Lew Wallace, by special permit from 
the Sultan, obtained this privilege, and took with him several particular friends 




MAN PLOUGHING WITH CAMEL. 

of his own, among them Dr. Selah Merrill, then resident in Jerusalem. Their 
report was of six mock tombs of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Sarah, Rebekah and 
Leah, each w T ife tying opposite her husband in the sealed crypt below. Beyond 
these, the mosque contains little to interest Jew or Christian. " Father Abraham' ' 
occupies an exalted place among saints revered by the Moslems, and the jealous 
hatred of the Jews, never absent from the creed and feelings of the worshiper of 
Mohammed, is at fever-heat in Hebron. Nowhere else in the Holy Land, or out 
of it, are they regarded with such intolerant suspicion as in the ancient city in 
which David reigned over Judah seven 3^ears and six months. Hence, the 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



329 



approach of an Israelite to the tomb of the patriarchs is even more abhorrent to 
"believers " than that of the " Christian dog." On our way to the Mosque we 
see certain money-changers of the despised race, sitting in the bazar, and learn 
how cunning is their revenge upon the masters who would drive them clean out 
of the land if it were possible. Traders and usurers everywhere, they grow rich 
in the neighborhood of Abraham's tomb by becoming money-lenders and pawn- 
brokers to the poorer citizens, and especially to the farming peasantry. One, in 
whose physiognomy the characteristic facial features are conspicuous, is examining 
a set of silver ornaments belonging to a farmer's wife, her husband standing 
anxious by her side. 

"He will lend her one-tenth of what they are worth," says David, "with 
the certainty that she can never redeem them. Or, he will buy them, out and 
out, at one-fifth of their value. I know his reputation. He has no mercy, and 
indeed it is not strange that he should be hard with these people who despise and 
insult him. ' ' 

A flight of broad, low steps conducts the faithful from the street to the main 
entrance of the mosque. Beyond the fifth step none but a Moslem may go upon 
penalty of death. We ascend to the forbidden line and look defiantly up, then 
aver that there is nothing within the walls worth our seeing, and enact the King 
of France's celebrated retrograde movement, stopping on the way " down again " 
to peer into a deep crevice between two of the old stones of the wall, into which, 
under the easy tolerance of the present government, the descendants of Abraham 
may, when they like, thrust their arms at full length to drop written petitions to 
their great ancestor. This is the Hebron Wailing Place and their nearest ap- 
proach to the tomb. The ceremony must be some sort of sad satisfaction to 
them in their disreputable homelessness in a land once deeded to them by the 
Judge of the whole earth, for we are told that many avail themselves of the poor 
right, 

A wall of comparatively modern masonry shuts in the mosque from profane 
eyes. By mounting a heap of rubbish across the street we can see the quadran- 
gular building reared above the cave of Machpelah. The gray walls are of the 
great stones we have learned to recognize as belonging to the Phoenician period, 
and identical in finish with those in the base of David's Tower in Jerusalem. 
The Crusaders consecrated and used the mosque as a church. A writer of the 
period during which it was occupied by the Christian invaders describes the cave 
as divided into three chambers, the last containing the six tombs of which I have 
spoken. He relates, also, that it was the habit of Jews to bring thither in tubs or 
boxes the bones of their dead to be laid near the sepulchres of the patriarchs. 
The desire to sleep with one's fathers and the custom of the survivors of carrying 
out the wish were even then extremely ancient. Witness the oath exacted by 



33Q 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



Joseph from the children of Israel that they would carry his bones out of Egypt 
with them, a promise kept two hundred years afterward. 

A narrow alley leading to the mosque is alleged by tradition to be the scene 
of the murder of Abner by Joab, when " he took him aside in the gate to speak 
with him quietly and smote him there under the fifth rib that he died. ' ' Assassina- 
tion so dastardly that every reader sympathizes in the bitter outbreak of the nomi- 
inal king then reigning in Hebron ; "These men, the sons of Zeruiah, be too 
hard for me ! ' ' 

Our next halt is at the " pool of Hebron." It is a large shallow tank, occu- 
pying about half as much space as a modern city block of average size, and sur- 




rounded by a wall of solid masonry. The water is stagnant, and coated with 
green scum, but women are coming down the steps at one corner with skins to be 
filled. The water, such at is, is shallow, leaving exposed above it, some twenty 
feet of wall. We try to guess whereabouts were nailed the feet and hands of 
Rechab and Baanah his brother, the sons of Rimmon the Beerothite, who, after 
killing the sleeping Ishbosheth, ' ' took his head and gat them away through the 
plain all night and brought the head of Ishbosheth unto David to Hebron." 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



331 



Instead of the expected reward, they were put to death and their hands and feet 
hung over this pool as a terror to other evil-doers. 

Our luncheon is spread in the house of the only missionaries in Hebron, Mr. 
and Mrs. Murray. They are, moreover, the cnly Christians in the home of 
Abraham and David, with the exception of an English family resident in the 
hospital lately erected here by the Church Missionary Society. Mr. and Mrs. 
Murray are under the care of no one denomination or society, and lead the 
simplest, happiest "life of faith" it has ever been my privilege to behold. In 
one room is collected a class of twenty -two little Moslem girls, who are instructed 
in knitting, sewing and reading by Mrs. Murray and her Bible- reader. I sit down 
among them and make friends with the well-behaved pretty little creatures, by 
" turning off" a garter, and hemming a few inches of a ruffle. The school began 
with two children and not one dollar. More than twenty are now in regular 
attendance, and daily means have come with daily strength for daily needs. And 
even in bigoted Hebron the Master has given this pair of trusting laborers great 
favor in the eyes of the people. 



CHAPTER XXXVII. 



THE THRESHING FLOOR OF ORNAN. 

E are so fortunate as to have in our first visit to Mount 
Moriah the guidance of Rev. Selah Merrill, D. D., IX. D., 
whose long consulate in Jerusalem and ability as archaeolo- 
gist and historian have qualified him beyond any other living 
man for the office of cicerone to the Holy City and the 
environs thereof. Our little party is preceded by Mohammed, 
the " kervasse " of the American consul, a personage so 
much more magnificent than his nominal master as to deserve, or demand, espe- 
cial mention. From top to toe he is official. The embroidered vest; the loose 
sleeves, stiff with gold lace; the jauntily- ferocious tilt of the red fez capping his 
six feet of altitude, the wand of office in his right hand (something that suggests 
in equal measure the " hunting-crop " of an English squire and the " caduceus " 
of Mercury) , go to make up the imposing presence stalking down David Street, 
then turning into side-ways lined with stuffy bazaars. 

He takes, and keeps, the middle of the narrow thoroughfare leading into the 
heart of the city from the open space before the Grand Hotel. At ten o'clock on 
this fine winter morning all the world is abroad. The heavy rains have washed 
the steep street almost clean. We see more distinctly than during previous walks 
that it is paved with square stones, and, instead of being graded in the ordinary 
way, drops to the lower level every ten feet or so, in a marble step six inches deep. 
Of course, no wheeled vehicle can be used upon it, but donkeys, laden with human 
and inanimate freight, amble up and down the miniature precipices; camels lower 
their clumsy hulks, one foot at a time, and climb as if each step were an outrage 
to the inner brute. Barefoot boys belabor the donkeys' unyielding flanks; tur- 
baned men tug and drive the larger craft of the desert. 

Mohammed, the Magnificent, goes neither around nor over anything. Come 
what may, and go what can, he holds the right of way in the centre of the street. 
Under the temperate rule of the representative of a Republic, he forbears to strike 
man or beast. Everything makes way for the party of pale-faces, and nobody 
eyes us curiously or stops to stare at us. 

Without the enclosure of what were of old the Temple grounds, and which is 
now the wall defending the precincts of the Mosque of Omar, we pause while 
Mohammed, running briskly forward, disappears into the barracks and presently 
emerges with two uniformed soldiers. Prior to the visit of the Prince of Wales 

(333) 




334 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



and his tutor-guardian, Dean Stanley, to the Holy Land, no Christian was suffered 
to pass the limits of the Temple area. To-day, Jew and Gentile may visit even 
the interior of the Mosque, but under the surveillance of a Turkish soldier. The 
brace of warriors detailed to attend us clank close at our heels throughout the 
three hours we spend upon holy ground, and we are cautioned not to speak of 

Turkey by name, or 
to comment even in 
English upon the 
peculiar stringency 
of existing govern- 
mental laws and or- 
ders. 

All this matters 
little to visitors whose 
thoughts are sur- 
charged with the as- 
sociations aroused by 
the fact that our feet 
actually stand within 
the gates of the Sa- 
cred Place. The space 
enclosed by the walls 
of the Mosque is 
nearly identical with 
that occupied by the 
ancient Temple 
grounds. It is, for 
the most part, paved 
with slabs of white 
stone. 

' ' This was the 
Court of the Gen- 
tiles, ' ' says our guide 
mohammed The magnificent. and instructor, and 

when we have crossed it and gone up a step or two — "And this the Court of the 
Women. ' ' 

Olive and acacia and karob trees grow luxuriantly in patches of unpaved soil. 
Mohammed breaks off and offers us green sprays to take away as souvenirs of 
place and hour. 

Such goodly trees may have been in David's mind when he cried out in pro- 
phetic transport: "lam like a green olive-tree in the House of God !" 




(335) 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



337 



We loiter a little in the rear of the small company of Gentile strangers, to 
reproduce in imagination the throngs that filled the area while the Royal Preacher 
bowed himself in prayer with hands spread forth to heaven upon the brazen 
scaffold he had reared in the sight of all the congregation of Israel. ' 'And said, 
O Lord God of Israel ! 
there 
Thee 



is 




no God like 
in the heaven, 
nor in the earth ! " 

The mighty plateau, 
built up, filled in and 
leveled by the Wise 
King, overlooks val- 
leys and hills in all 
directions. Solomon's 
Porch, glorious in 
white-and-gold, for- 
merly crowned the hill 
on the eastern side. 

"And Jesus walked 
in the Temple, in Solo- 
mon's Porch." 

Here the lame man 
clung in a rapture of 
joy and gratitude to 
Peter and John until a 
crowd collected about 
the three, "greatly 
wondering. ' ' 

The tower on the 
northwest corner of 
the enclosed area occu- 
pies the site of the tower of Antonia, from which the Roman chief captain ran down 
with centurions and soldiers to rescue Paul from the infuriated Jews. This, as the 
readers of Josephus will recall, was the last citadel held by the Jews in the final 
siege of Jerusalem. The Mosque of Omar, although inferior in dimensions to the 
Temple, is exceedingly beautiful without and within. I well recollect with what 
avidity I used to read travelers' stories of the mysterious interior to which none but 
the Moslem faith could penetrate, and how more than one curious pilgrim lost his 
life in the attempt to explore it in disguise. The gorgeous environment of tiles, 
mosaics, wrought marbles and stained glass detains us but a few minutes in our 



MOSQUE OF OMAR. 




THE TCTWJSK UF ANTONIA, JERUSALEM. 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



339 



hurried passage to what would be called in music and poetry the "motif" of the 
superb structure. The hoary brow of Mount Moriah breaks through the tessel- 
lated pavement directly under the noble dome. A richly- wrought railing sur- 
rounds it. I thrust a reverent hand through an interstice and let it lie upon the 
rough surface, deaf to the voluble prattle of the trio of sacristans who insist upon 
pointing out the clumsy imitation of the imprint of a man's hand graven in the 
granite. It is a big, ungainly hand-print, and, according to Moslem tradition, 




was left there by the angel Gabriel. To clear this story out of the way, let me 
say that Mohammed, is fabled to have ascended to heaven from this rock, which 
started with him, and was held back by the angel. 

" Let the fellows tell it to you," advises Dr. Merrill. " I always do this. It 
is the best way of ridding oneself of them. They cannot go on telling the same 
story for all time, even in the hope of 1 baksheesh.' " 

The tale repeated with an infinity of gesticulation and gibberish, the doctor 
kindly engages the chatterers in conversation in their own tongue, and we come 
back to the bare rock over which twelve hundred years agone, Caliph-Ab-el-Melek 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



341 



built a Mosque. Inwardly we are grateful for the legend that has led to the jealous 
preservation, without coating of marble or inlaying of fine gold, of the naked top 
of the hallowed mountain. Beyond reasonable doubt, it was upon this rock that 
Abraham 14 built an altar, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac, his son, 
and laid him upon the altar upon the wood." 

No student of sacred history and archaeology disputes the assertion that the 
awful apparition of ' ' the angel of the Lord standing between the earth and heaven, 

I 



i ' - . . ' Jit 




BEAUTIFUL GATE OF THE TEMPLE. 



having a drawn sword in his hand stretched out over Jerusalem, ' ' seemed to David's 
lifted eyes to hover above this, the threshing-floor of Oman, the Jebusite. 

1 ' So David bought the threshing-floor and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver. 
And David built there an altar unto the Lord and offered burnt-offerings and peace- 
offerings. ' ' 

The great altar of Solomon's Temple succeeded that erected by his father. A 
Christian church was reared here by the Crusaders, and for nearly two hundred 
years, European kings, before assuming their crowns, laid them, in solemn dedi- 
cation, upon this rock. It is fifty-six feet long by forty-two wide. Dr. Merrill 
shows us a round hole about the size of a man's body in the heart of the huge 




(34 2 ) (SO-CALLED) STABLES OF SOLOMON IN TEMPLE ANA. 



THE FLAG 'OF THE ORIENT. 



343 



stone, believed by competent judges to be the aperture by which the blood of 
victims slain in sacrifice flowed into escape pipes. A cave or crypt beneath the 
upper stone is floored with marble, and a circular space, corresponding with the 
upper opening, gives back a hollow reverberation when struck. Could this be 
lifted, the vast " leader " flooded daily with the typical purple tide — ■ 

The blood of beasts 
On Jewish altars slain, 

could, probably, be followed to the valley a hundred feet below. One intrepid 
explorer, many years ago, by the help of huge bribes, obtained permission from the 
guardians of the place to lift the marble cover and lower himself by ropes into the 
very bowels of the mountain. At the last moment, superstitious fears overcame 
avarice, and the permission was revoked. The Mohammedans say that the hole 
is the mouth of hell and that evil spirits would arise in a great cloud should the 
sealing marble be removed. 

Directed by Dr. Merrill, we make out the location, beyond the central rock 
and railing, of the Holy of Holies. The space once filled by ark and cherubim is 
small. No devout Jew will enter the mosque, lest he should inadvertently tread 
upon the hallowed spot which it was not lawful for any man to visit save the high 
priest, and he but once a year. 

In leaving the grounds, one of the party leaps up lightly to snatch for me a 
bit of hyssop growing in a cleft of the stones, quoting of the King-philosopher: 

' ' And he spake of trees, from the cedar- tree that is in Lebanon even unto the 
hyssop that springeth out of the wall." 

The traditional site of Pilate's Judgment-Hall is hard by the Temple enclosure. 
The howls of our Lord's enemies must have echoed through the midnight silence 
of the courts to which the tribes had that day repaired with "joys unknown " to 
celebrate the Passover-feast. 



CHAPTER XXXVIII. 
"THE GREEN HILL FAR AWAY." 

IT is Sunday morning and without communicating our intention to anyone 
except our dragoman we have left the hotel directly after breakfast, 
accompanied by him have passed out of the city through the Jaffa 
gate and, skirting the ^^gagg/gBP — ^walls as far as the Damascus 
Gate, diverged there from ^^^pj -'ifck** 16 highway to climb this 

gentle eminence. The . top and one side are 

studded with many CSgjft |jk ^ at an d a few upright 

tombstones. For jSMKBKBEtKm ■ m'' v uncounted eenera- 






Musicians. 



STREET SCENES IN THE CITY OF CAIRO, EGYPT. 

tions the Moslems have buried their dead here, and thus protected it from the 
encroachment of buildings for the use of the living. Across the road rises the 
north wall of Jerusalem, founded upon and built into the solid rock. The ancient 
capital of Israel was a "city that had foundations." In the native granite upbear- 
ing the massive masonry is a rude door, closed to-day and locked, leading into 

(345) 



346 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



Solomon's Quarries. We explored them, yesterday, marveling to see " what 
manner of stones" were left there by workmen who hewed out and squared the 
material for the temple " so that there was neither hammer, nor axe, nor any tool 
of iron heard in the house while it was in building. ' ' Big blocks, still as white as 

chalk, because never exposed to air 
and light, bear the mark of chisel and 
wedge. When the quarry was first 
opened may years ago, bones of men 
and also of animals, and fragments of 
pottery were found in out-of-the-way 
corners. These last were probably left 
there by workmen, while the human 
remains may have been those of fugi- 
tives from the law or from persecution 
forced to hide in forgotten dens. 

Diagonally opposite the quarry 




MOHAMMEDAN f 
CARPET- | 
WEAVER. I 




yawns a natural 
cave, known fa- 
miliarly as the 
' ' Grotto of Jere- 
miah," from a 
tradition that the 
prophet lived 
here while writ- 
ing his Lamenta- 
tions. I name it now because it, and another wide mouth in the upright rock, 
form the eyes in the "skull," which is considered by some to assist in the 
identification of this hill with Golgotha. By the help of imagination anybody 
can make out the eyes, the line of the nose, and the mouth. Some think it mar- 
velous and attach great importance to the fantastic likeness. Others find in the 
round top of the hill warrant for calling it ' 1 the place of a skull." Thoughtful 



BAKING BREAD AND GRINDING CORN IN PERSIA. 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



347 



archaeologists set aside these features of the spot, whether natural or artificial, as 
unnecessary in proving that here was enacted the most momentous scene in the 
history of the world and of the universe. Since our arrival in Jerusalem we have 
studied carefully the evidence of what is now the received hypothesis of the most 
learned and devout Bible scholars of the age, with regard to the place of the 
Crucifixion. As briefly as is consistent with comprehensiveness, I will rehearse 
some of the reasons we have for believing this "green hill " to be the true Calvary. 

I have already cited several arguments against the once popular belief that 
the Church of the Holy Sepulchre covers the place where the Cross was set up, 




"A GREAT HEBREW CEMETERY I, AY ABOUT THE BASE." 



as well as " that where the Lord lay " during the three days separating His Death 
from His Resurrection. It is needless to repeat them here further than to say 
that the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is not, and has never been, outside of the 
gate of Jerusalem, and, that Our Lord was led forth to the " place of a skull " and 
"suffered without the gate" is directly affirmed by the writers of the Bible. 
Scripture students will not require to be reminded of the important significance of 
this circumstance in connection with Christ our Sacrifice. 

In looking, then, for a hill resembling a skull in shape, without the gate, in 
a public place where many passing by would witness the Crucifixion, bearing in 
mind also that the place of public execution among the Romans remained the 



348 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



same from one age to another (as witness the scene of Paul's death at Tre 
Fontane, near Rome, well-known as the ancient Tyburn of that city), and seeking 
to find records of other executions as having occurred in the same vicinity; reading 
that the new sepulchre of Joseph of Arimathea was near the place where He was 
crucified, hence, in consecrated ground already used as a Jewish burying ground 
— it would be strange, indeed, had intelligent explorers failed to see how faithfully 

all these requisites 
are met by the hill 
on which we now 
sit. 

Behind us, as we 
face the city and 
look directly into 
I the Temple enclo- 

| > " . s I sure , li es what was 

J known four hun- 

I Christ as the 
" Place of Stoning' ' 
and as the scene of 
Stephen's death. 
It bears the name 
I still in Jewish tra- 
tBB ditions, an( i there, 
according to Je^ 
chroniclers, crn 
nals were hung up 
by the hands after 
death until the sun 
went down. A 
church in memory 
of St. Stephen was 
raised upon the 
" Place of Ston- 

- THE SOLITARY TOMB." j ng , , by Kudoda 

in the fifth century, the ruins of which have lately been excavated down to the 
exquisite mosaic pavement. In turning to the account given of the death of 
Stephen, we note that the marginal reference against the words, "they cast him 
out of the city," is Hebrew xiii. 12: 

1 ' Wherefore, Jesus, also, that He might sanctify the people with His own 




THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



349 



blood, suffered without the gate." The proximity of the two places is, to say the 
least, a singular coincidence. 

A great Hebrew cemetery la)' all about the base and upon the slope of the line 
of hills of which Calvary is one, for centuries before Our Lord's birth. Of this 
I shall speak more at length by and by. If Joseph of Armithea had wished to 
be gathered to his fathers at his death, he would naturally have made hereabouts 
his new tomb. 

At " Herod's Gate " began, in the time of Our Lord, the great military road 
leading from Jerusalem to Caesarea Philippi, along which Paul was hurried at 
night by his escort of four hundred and seventy Roman soldiers, he riding in 
their midst upon the beast provided for him to bring him safe to Felix, the Gov- 
ernor. This road, recently uncovered, winds directly about the foot of this hill, 
and forks of the great highway lead off to Damascus and other large towns. At 
the Great Feast of the Passover it would have been thronged with passers-by, and 
lent itself fully to the custom of the Romans of making their places of execution 
as public as possible by establishing them near the busiest thoroughfares. 

I cannot resist the temptation to quote at this point from the eloquent com- 
ment of Dr. Cunningham Geikie upon his able summing up of proofs as to the 
identity of the ' ' New Calvary ' ' with the old. 

" Here, then, on this bare, rounded knoll . . . the Saviour of the world 
appears to have passed away with that great cry which has been held to betoken 
■cardiac rupture — for it would seem that He literally died of a broken heart. 
Before Him lay outspread the guilty city which had clamored for His blood; 
beyond it, the . pale slope of Olivet from which He was shortly to ascend in 
triumph to the right hand of the Majest)^ on High; and in the distance, but clear 
and seemingly near, the pinkish-yellow mountains of Moab, lighting up, it may 
he, the fading eyes of the Innocent One with the remembrance that His death 
would one day bring back lost manhood to the Kingdom of God." 

I read it aloud, and then, more slowly and tenderly, the story of the Cruci- 
fixion given by each of the four Evangelists. 

The day is very still; the place is deserted but for ourselves, seated upon a 
-flat tomb-stone, and David, who stands within hearing of the familiar, always 
thrilling words. About our feet fragile crocuses pierce the earth, clustering closely 
upon the southern side of the grave-stones. Hyssop grows freely in the pale- 
green turf, and wild lilies shoot rank leaves above the lower herbage. Masses of 
clouds, white and gray, roll slowly apart, glints of sunshine stream fitfully upon 
the low cliffs at our right, where is another and much smaller cave than the 
Grotto of Jeremiah — a sepulchre hewn in the rock, and overlooking a garden. A 
very ancient well attests the age of the enclosed space, and olive and fig trees 
grow in the garden. 



350 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



We let ourselves down to the lower level, and are in front of what Gordon 
Cummings, Selah Merrill, Lew Wallace and many other godly and learned men 
believe to be the long-hidden Tomb of Christ. 

We have visited the vaults excavated, with the ruined church built by the 
pious Eudocia, and seen with strange emotion the grooves in which moved the 
rolling stones used in Our Lord's time for closing the mouth of the principal tomb 
containing several sarcophagi or niches in which bodies were laid. When uncov- 




" ODDITY RIVEN FROM TOP TO BOTTOM." 



ered, these were full of bones, great heaps of which are still to be seen in holes 
beneath the niches. A road divides this cemetery from Calvary, and the explorers 
have not been allowed to dig beneath the highway for other graves that, no doubt, 
reach all the way to the solitary tomb in the side of Calvary. A board door has 
been fitted into the opening once filled by the rolling stone, and a square window 
cut out in the same side of the rock allows anyone to look in. The door is kept 
locked, and the key, during Dr. Merrill's time of office, was kept at the American 
Consulate. A single empty sarcophagus fills the far end of the small chamber. 
There is no inscription, and, as I gratefully record, no frippery of altar, candles, 




1351) 



352 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



lace and artificial flowers detracts from the solemn simplicity of the shrine. Upon 
the brink of the natural cliff is a great rock, oddly riven from top to bottom by 
the shock of an earthquake, each severed projection corresponding with a depres- 
sion or gap upon the other side of the fissure. David points out these peculiarities 
diffidently : 

' ' Of course nobody can say positively that it is so, and we Protestants are, 
maybe, over careful in such matters, but I can't help thinking whenever I look at 
that, of what St. Matthew tells us — that "the earth did quake, and the rocks 
rent." 

I find the place and read on: 

' 'And the graves were opened, and many bodies of the saints which slept 
arose, and came out of the graves after His resurrection, and went into the Holy 
City and appeared unto many." 

The saints that slept in the mighty cemetery lying along these hills from 
Olivet to Golgotha — the vanguard of the multitude which no man can number 
who shall stand beside their victorious Lord at the last day upon the ?arth. 



CHAPTER XXXIX. 



ON THE ROAD TO BETHLEHEM. 

O other stage of our eventful journey in gs has seemed so like a beauti- 
ful dream, from which we keep thinking that we must presently 
awake to disappointment, than this glorious December morning on 
which we find ourselves actually setting out for Bethlehem. 
Ten months ago, when the plans for this tour were first discussed by us, 
we had but one definite idea as to the dates and methods of our travels: 

" If we go," we said, resolutely, " we will spend Christmas in Bethlehem." 
Our itinerary, as then sketched, has undergone many changes, some deliber- 
ate, others forced upon us by unforeseen exigencies. This one design has stood 
by us, a fixed pivot, upon which all modifications have revolved. 

It is the twenty-fourth of December, and a cloudless day. Going, as is my 
custom, every clear morning, to the loggia on the roof of the Grand Hotel, for a 
view of the city and encompassing hills, I see the sky of a clear amber behind the 
far-off mountains of Moab; the silver-gray olives on the descent of the Mount of 
Olives shining softly in the rising sun, and upon the western horizon the round 
crown of the hill where Rizpah the daughter of Aiah watched the bodies of her 
dead sons ' ' from the beginning of harvest until water dropped upon them out of 
heaven, and suffered not the birds of the air to rest on them by day, nor the beasts 
of the field by night. ' ' 

"And it was told David" (here, in his royal capital of Jerusalem) , "what 
Rizpah had done." 

It is not perhaps unnatural that the vision suggested by the sight of the lonely 
hill- top should be joined in my mind with that of another mother, David's de- 
scendant, Mary of Bethlehem, who was to watch upon the brow of another Mount 
of Expiation, her soul pierced through b}~ as sharp a sword as that which rankled 
all those anguished days and nights in the fierce heart of her who had borne unto 
her kingly lover Armoni and Mephibosheth. The joys, the pains, the sorrows 
and the compensations of motherhood have been the same from Eve's day until 
now. 

There is no question as to the safety of the carriage-road to Bethlehem. A 
macadamized causeway runs all the way from Jerusalem to Hebron, past the 
birthplace of David and "David's Greater Son." Our carriage is one of many 
that take it to-day. The blue of the sky is like that of Switzerland; there are no 
23 (353) 



! 




354 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



mists in the valleys between the russet- red and gray-green hills. Our horses are 
good, and the rush of the air in our faces and lungs is an ecstasy. At every hun- 
dred yards we are thrilled by the mention of names as well known and as dear as 
those of our own kindred and the places trodden by our childish feet. 

" The Valley of Rephaim !" says our guide, indicating fertile fields bounding 
the track and stretching out far to right and left. We stop the carriage to " look 
it up." 

The border-line between Judah and Benjamin was drawn hereabouts. It 
" went up by the Valley of the Son of Hinnom " — (" There is the valley of Hin- 




THE STONE OF ELIJAH. 

nom !" interposes the dragoman)— " Unto the south side of the Jebusite; the 
same is Jerusalem. And the border went up to the top of the mountain that lieth 
before the valley of Hinnom westward, which is at the end of the valley " (or 
Rephai-m) ' 1 northward. ' ' 

We turn back to Genesis: 

"And in the fourteenth year came Chedorlaomer and the kings that were 
with him and smote the Rephaim," giants and powerful, 1921 years before the 
birth of Christ. 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



355 



" If the Captain will look at Second Samuel, fifth chapter and eighteenth 
verse," says David, modestly. 

" The Philistines also came and spread themselves in the valley of Rephaim. ,> 

Repulsed by David, leaving their idols behind in the retreat to be. destroyed 
by David and his men, they "came up again, and spread themselves in the 
Valley of Rephaim." 

The figure of the rolling hosts, like spreading waters over the fertile reaches, 
is apt as we survey the twice-chosen battle-ground. 

The exquisite episode of the ' ' sound of a going in the tops of the mulberry- 




THE HOUSE OF BENJAMIN. 



trees" follows, after which David smote the Philistines from Geba until thou 
come to Gazer." 

In turning the nex' leaf of what we note down as ' ' a peripatetic Bible lesson, 
with illustrations from actual scenes," — we alight and mount a stone at the road- 
side for an unobstructed view of the landscape we have overpast. Just here Abra- 
ham must have caught sight of Mount Moriah on the third day of his journey 
from his quiet home in the shadow of the grove (or tree) he had planted in 



356 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



Beer-Sheba and where he had sojourned for many days before receiving the awful 
command to sacrifice his son — " this one only son, Isaac, whom thou lovest, 
upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of. ' ' 

"Then, on the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes, and saw the place afar 
off. And Abraham said unto his young men — "Abide ye here with the ass; and 
I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come again to you." 

il Here" — where we read the story, our backs turned upon the Mount of 
Promise, on our way to worship upon the Mount of Fulfillment, on the birthplace 




"WEtt OF THE THREE KINGS." 



of the Divine and only Son whose day Abraham saw in the long, long vista of the 
ages and was glad ! 

Our guide has a tradition — frankly admitted to be only a tradition — to relate 
of another, and a flat stone on the other side of the road. Elijah, also coming 
from Beersheba, where he had left his servant, "went a day's journey into the 
wilderness and sat down under a juniper tree; and he requested for himself that 
he might die; and said, ' It is enough 1 now, O Lord, take away my life; for I am 
not better than my fathers.' " 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



357 



After the miraculous refreshment of " a cake baken on the coals," and water, 
lie "laid him down again," and slept so long and hard that he left a shallow 
impress of his body in the rock, says the legend. The face of the flat stone is* 
slightly indented, but with the utmost aid of willing imaginations we cannot 
trace the outline of a human form. A thrifty olive-tree shades the prophet's 
hard bed, and near by is a large substantial building— the monastery of St. Elias. 

Another monastery is pointed out on our right when we have bowled along, 
the smooth road for ten or fifteen minutes longer. "The house of Benjamin"' 




TOMB OF RACHKIf. 



means little until the information is added that here it is said Benjamin was bom 
on the way from Bethel, when " there was but a little way to come to Ephrath." 

We are out of the carriage again, open Bible in hand, and walk up the 
shaded alley leading from the gate to the convent. A thrifty olive orchard hides 
the house from the highway, and we do not care to go up to the door of what we 
can see is a modern building. The sunlight flickers between the leaves over the 
page upon which we read how ' ' it came to pass, as her soul was in departing 
(for shedied) that she called his name 'Ben-oni,' but his father called him 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



'Benjamin.'" The grove is sweet and peaceful; budding lilies are springing 
luxuriantly in the walks. We find ourselves wondering at what season the poor 
mother laid her down, unexpectedly, upon her bed of pain and death, and if olives 
and lilies grew here then. 

On the other side of the way is another traditional landmark, the Well of the 
Three Kings, where, as the story runs, the three wise men from the East stopped 
to water their horses when Herod had sent them to Bethlehem to search diligently 
for the young child, and again beheld the star which they had seen in the East 




"heaps pressing down the dead." 



going before them, " till it came and stood over where the young child was. 
When they saw the star they rejoiced with exceeding great joy." 

The legend may be, like a thousand others, the work of monkish fancy, but 
heard here, with the white roofs of Bethlehem in sight, it is exceedingly beautiful 
ana impressive. The well, or spring, is surrounded by stonework said to belong 
to the Roman period. 

Our next, and longest, pause in the wonderful series of object-lessons is at 
the Tomb of Rachel, one of the best authenticated localities in Palestine. 

"And Rachel died, and was buried in the way to Ephrath, which is Bethlehem. 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



359 



And Jacob set up a pillar upon her grave; that is the pillar of Rachel's grave unto 
this day." 

* 1 When thou art departed from me to-day, then shalt thou find two men by 
Rachel's sepulchre in the border of Benjamin at Zelzah," Samuel told Saul 
between six and seven hundred years after Rachel's burial. The inimitably 
pathetic prophecy of Rachel weeping for her children, quoted by Matthew as ful- 
filled in the massacre of the children in Bethlehem and the coast thereof, refers to 
the tomb of Benjamin's mother within sight of Bethlehem-Epl ratah. 




IN THE FIELD OF BOAZ. 



A chamber about twenty feet square and as many high is surmounted .by a 
low dome. Behind this is a sort of quadrangular courtyard with a flat roof. The 
entire building is of stone, put roughly together with cement. There is no 
attempt at decoration without, nor, as we are assured, within. This we take 
upon hearsay, as visitors are not allowed to enter the inner chamber. To-day, 
I the building is closed in every part. We stroll quite around it, finding it blank, 
>mean and desolate. The Jews are the custodians of the tomb, but the gravet 




(36c) 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



36i 



scattered all around it are of Bedouins. A few are enclosed by rude masonry, but 
the great majority are irregular heaps of stones, collected at random, and piled 
with no attempt at order. An oblong ring of the large stones marks the confines 
of each grave; the rest are huddled within this, making a sort of cairn. 

The sight is forbidding enough before we learn that the heaps pressing down 
the dead are needed to protect the bodies from hyenas. Recollecting how often 
we have heard the horrid laughter of the unclean beasts through our tent- walls, 
we shudder at the weird scene conjured up by fancy by this new scrap of knowl- 
edge. Of the bare and lonely sepulchre, dim under the stars, or defined by the 
moonlight, the midnight silence broken by the growls of the baffled brutes as they 
tear at the heavy stones, or shriek with delight over the rifling of a shallow grave 
into which the tenant was thrust with careless hands, and left unguarded except 
by the gravelly sand we crunch under our feet. It is a dreary resting-place for 
the patriarch's petted wife. The only vegetation near it is a woolly -leaved plant 
growing under the wall. I pluck a spray and press it in my note-book. Beneath 
I pencil the touching digression from the main line of Jacob's narrative to Rachel's 
elder son, forty years after he had laid his darling down for the long sleep on the 
roadside. After speaking of Joseph's sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, as entitled to 
a place among their father's brethren, rather than among his issue, the old man 
begins to wander backward in his talk, and never completes what he had begun 
to say at the first: 

' 'And, as for me, when I came from Padan, Rachel died by me in the land 
of Canaan in the way, when yet there was but a little way to come unto Ephrath; 
and I buried her there in the way of Ephrath; the same is Bethlehem." 

Did something in Joseph's eyes bring up the face of his beautiful mother to 
the dying husband who had never ceased to be her lover ? Or had the father a 
vague intention of commending to the son the charge of her grave, and the pillar 
Jacob had set upon it ? 



CHAPTER XL. 



CHRISTMAS IN BETHLEHEM. 

BETHLEHEM is approached by a succession of hills, terraced to afford 
foothold for olive, fig and mulberry -trees and vineyards. In David's 
youth it was a prosperous region, and the successors of Boaz and 
Jesse maintain a tolerable reputation as good farmers. By contrast 
with the shiftless husbandry between Jerusalem and Jericho it is like a garden in 
order and fertility. 

The appearance of the town is imposing when we behold it from the plains 
below. The group of churches, about which the white stone houses are clustered, 




ON THE ROOF. 

have some architectural pretensions, and rise finely from the summit of the ridge 
sloping away from them on two sides. When surrounded by walls the site must 
have been picturesque, and as a fortification, strong. At a distance the houses 
look higher than they really are, being built upon the sides of the ridge. After 

(362) • 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



363 



reaching the town we perceive that it is not an exception to other Syrian 1 ' settle- 
ments," 01 whatever size, in point of commodiousness and cleanliness. The 
steep streets are the only sewers, and are so narrow that two carriages cannot pass 
in many ot them. They are also so crooked that, as our vehicle rattles around a 
corner, the driver gives a warning yell to pedestrians lest they should be surprised 
and hurt. He dashes through one and whirls into another in great style, cracking 
his whip and shrieking out his cautions to the occupants of doorways and the 
middle ot the thoroughfare, while the foul mud flies in every direction. The peo- 



■■■■ 





A COMPANY OF GYPSIES. 

pie take him quietly, with true Oriental indifference, flattening themselves against 
the walls and retiring into open doors and arches until the danger is over. In one 
very strait passage we meet two camels, the nose of the second tied by a rope to 
the saddle of the first. We graze the mire-encrusted side of one and nearty upset 
the other, without lessening our speed, until we draw up with a mighty clatter 
and jerk at the door of the " Hotel Bethleem." 

The great square between the hotel and the Church of the Nativity is filled 
with people, most of them in holiday attire, and after a hasty luncheon brought 
with us, but eaten in a big, bare room of the caravanserai, we go up to the roof for 



364 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



a better view of the striking scene. A parapet, three feet high, runs all around 
our look-out. There are a few chairs for infirm or distinguished guests, and 
plenty of standing-room for a party little less varied in character than the greater 
assembly below. Five nationalities are represented among the spectators upon 
our house-top, the hotel being beneath us. As far as we can see them, every roof 
is filled with people, the white veils and gay jackets of the women giving a festive 
air to the multitude. The aspect of the open square — as I reflect with a thrill of 
emotion — probably does not differ material^ from what might have been seen 




{ ONE END OE THE MARKET- PI, ACE. ' ' 



there almost nineteen hundred years ago on Christmas- Eve. "All the world" 
was to be taxed, and Bethlehem Ephrata was little among the thousands of Judah; 
too strait to accommodate the return of those of the house and lineage of natives 
of the town, who must be enrolled there. 

There will be no room in this, or any other inn of Bethlehem to-night for one- 
fourth of the visitors drawn hither by the prospective celebration out-of-doors and 
in the church. In the shadow of the barracks opposite a company of gypsies 
have pitched their tents and are cooking their dinner in the open street, an opera- 
tion gravely superintended by an ass in harness. A bearded shepherd and his 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



365 



wife have lambs in their arms for sale. A string of kneeling camels occupies one 
end of the market-place, their gowned and turbaned owners chatting, or, more 
likely, chaffering near by. An old man and a girl who pulls one end of her izzar 
over her mouth, as a man in European cut-away coat and Derby hat turns to look 
at her in passing, sit upon the ground with half a dozen hoppled hens at their feet, 
awaiting purchasers. While the clamor and bustling activity of an American 
gala-day are absent, the subdued hum of many voices arises to' our ears like the 
swarming of a thousand bees. 

Mary had come up from Nazareth with her husband and would be weary of 
nerve and limb, diffident in the presence of the motley crowd, anxious to get into 
shelter, and disappointed , 
with the heart-sickening 
chagrin of a modest peasant 
girl, when she found that 
there was not a vacant nook 
in the khan where she could 
lie down and rest. We 
make it all so real to our- 
selves that we resent the 
complacent well-being of 
the loungers below, the 
greater comfort of the 
watchers upon the secluded 
house-top. We visited the 
oldest khan in Jerusalem 
last week, and it helped us 
to understand into what sort 
of quarters she was com- 
pelled to retire at last. 
The little light came 
through openings in the 
groined roof; the stone 
floor was littered with bun- 
dles of straw and hay along the four walls, which had fastened to them raised 
mangers but a foot above the ground. We have likewise seen several stables in 
caves, and learned that these natural grottoes are, in some parts of Syria, pre- 
ferred to buildings above ground. 

Our minds are preoccupied with the Jewish maiden while the panorama of 
shifting figures and colors passes before the field of vision The crowd grows more 
dense; from the barracks issues a company of Turkish soldiery in brilliant uniform 




3 66 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



and marches down the middle of the square, throwing the masses of people 
right and left until a broad track is left clear from the end of the street to the 
entrance of the church. Upon the roof of a low wing of the barracks is collected 
a knot of men sumptuously appareled, to whom an officer evidently reports now 
and then. 

' ' The Patriarch of Syria and Palestine is too infirm to come in person, and he 
has sent a Bishop who will be here presently. All these people are waiting to see 
his arrival. The Pacha could not come, and has sent his dragoman. It is a case 




of substitution, all the way through," somebody says in English, and sneeringly. 
The Bishop is lunching somewhere, we are told vaguely, and, apparently, is in. 
no hurry to quit the table. Until he comes, we may not enter the church of the 
grotto of the Nativity. But for the novelty of the scene and the liberty to sit. 
silent if we choose, and think out our own thoughts, we should be intensely weary 
before a blare of trumpets sounds down the steep street and is answered by the 
bugler in front of the barracks. A mounted officer gallops into the square, strik- 
ing with the flat of his sword at trespassing groups. Two foot-soldiers, armed 
with whips of hippopotamus-hide take, each, one side of the way, and literally- 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



367 



lash the crowd back into place, respecting neither sex nor age. We can hear the 
hiss and thud of the heavy whip, and are amazed that no outcry, much less resist- 
ance, follows the blows. The populace are used to the summary methods of their 
masters, and take it all as a matter of course. Into the area thus rid of the lower 
orders of humanity, rides a small body of horsemen; several carriages come next; 
the militar}^ band bursts into triumphal music; the distinguished party leaves the 
roof and a majestic figure descends from a coach upon a carpet spread for his feet. 
At the sound of the trumpet, a procession of priests and choir-boys emerge from 




"EVERY HOUSE-TOP IS FII^ED." 



the church and, advancing slowly, singing as they go, have reached the carpeted 
space as the bishop steps from the carriage. 

Now ensues a ceremony inexplicable to us, and, perhaps on that account, fan- 
tastic to ludicrousness. The black robe with scarlet hood worn by the prelate is 
dexterously whisked off, and a purple robe with a train several yards in length 
substituted. Gloves of the same color are drawn upon his hands, which are then 
folded upon his breast and kept there, fingers extended stiffly like those of an 
automaton. Thus dressed, the bishop moves toward the church, attended by 
scores of ecclesiastics and acolytes, all wearing black gowns, and above these the 
garments we style, for the lack of the technical term, white dressing-sacks trimmed 



368 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



with lace that looks cheap, and is dear. Censers swing clouds of perfume into the 
air, the sustained chant of men's voices mingles with the chimes from the belfry; 
women drop upon their knees as the gorgeous pageant passes them. The bishop's 
pace is inconceivably deliberate; his steps must not be over an inch long. 

" Eike our little bride !" says a laughing voice in my ear. 

My Syrian interpreter, to whom I am indebted for the story of "Fudda's 
Wedding," stands close behind me, her black eyes full of enjoyment of my sur- 
prised interest in the performance. Four choir-boys bear the purple train; the 
white-robed attendants sway in the slow march like banks of lilies in a gentle 
breeze; the air is vibrant with bells and voices. It is all imposing and beautiful, 
and the pulses keep time to the throbbing of chant and chime. 

My interpreter leans near. 

" I wonder" — the careful articulation of a foreign phrase making the sen- 
tence more significant — " 1 wonder what Jesus thinks of all this 





CHAPTER XLI. 



CHRISTMAS IN BETHLEHEM (CONTINUED). 



G 



HK Church of the Nativity was built by Constantine (305-337 A. D.) 
and restored in the eleventh century by the Crusaders. The pillars 
upholding the roof are of reddish stone, and scratched all over with 
the names and crests of these valiant knights: 



" Their swords are rust, 
Their bones are dust, 
Their souls are with the saints, we trust." 



Eight centuries have, in passing, rubbed into illegibility what each man wrote 
of himself and his deeds in this high and holy place. More distinct, and easy to 
be read by a Greek scholar, is the inscription upon the octagonal baptismal font: 

" A memorial before God and for the peace and forgiveness of sinners {whose 
names the Lord knows).' ' 

One wall bears in (now) shattered mosaics rude pictures of the churches of 
Sardis and of Antioch. There were many other churches represented here and 
some mosaics date back to the twelfth century. Beyond the immense columns of 
dusky-red, the shell of the church with huge rafters richly embrowned by time, 
and the mutilated mosaics, little remains of the temple reared by Constantine and 
piously remodeled by the Crusaders. Modern ecclesiastical art has crowded the 
interior with costly decorations, most of which are in good taste, although some 
are tawdry. 

The service of Christmas Eve begins at half past ten at night. 

After a very poor dinner served in the Hotel Bethleem, and eaten in the good 
company of half-a-dozen Americans, an Englishwoman, a German officer and an 
Italian gentleman, we disperse to our several bedrooms and try to sleep until the 
hour of service. With myself the attempt is utterly vain. It is not only that the 
stone floors and walls of the small chamber create a chill that pierces to bone and 
marrow, and that an unclosable window opens upon the staircase, down which boots 
are clattering incessantly. My head is hot and my brain awhirl. In all the day I 
have had but one still hour in which to pull myself together and appreciate in 
heart and soul where I really am, and why I have come. At sunset I got away 
from the crowd of people and press of distractions, and found my way to the roof 
alone. 



(369) 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



37* 



The great square was no longer a restless mass of human life, but was dotted 
with groups of quiet figures; the area about the gypsy camp was faintly illumined 
by the wavering flame of thorns crackling under the supper-pot; here and there a 
duller glow revealed a brazier over which the owner warmed his hands or boiled 
his coffee. Beyond the massed houses with their twinkling windows, the outer 
darkness was rolling up from the valleys. . The hills lay hushed and low against 
the cold yellow of the horizon, and the stars were kindling in the zenith. The air 
was breezeless, but frosty, and I paced the wide area until the sky was full of stars, 




THE CHURCH OF THK NATIVITY. 

keeping watch over Bethlehem and the surrounding land, as ' 4 shepherds watched 
their flocks by night, 

All seated on the ground," 
upon the gentle slope over there, still bearing the name of the Field of the Shep» 
herds. 

It is of that lonely rapt hour, never-to-be-forgotten, and not to be described bj 
pen, that my mind is full to the exclusion of thoughts of slumber. In all the med * 
tations of the day, the Galilean peasant-girl has moved, a presence that m?j 
felt, almost seen. Her Magnificat is read again, and fox the third tiirk= to~r.ay, 
before we set out for the church. 



372 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



' It is thronged to suffocation. David has had a man on the spot, holding chairs 
for us ever since sunset. He lies, half-asleep, across them when we appear to claim 
them. The aisle upon our right is filled with kneeling women; the long white 
linen veils worn alike by by maid and wife, give a wondrously picturesque appear- 
ance to the throng. Men stand, shoulder to shoulder, in the aisle upon our left; 
the Europeans bare-headed, Turkish residents of towns wearing the red tarboosh, 
the shaven skulls of fellaheen bound with turbans, generally white. A liberal 
sprinkling of soldiers, on police duty, enlivens the more sober garments. The 
music is fine from choir and organ; at least forty gorgeous ecclesiastics, in gowns 
Stiff and glittering with gold embroidery, are within the chancel-pale. The bishop 




AREA ABOUT THE GYPSY CAMP. 



sits in the tall patriarchal chair at the extreme left of the high altar, as we face it, 
the brilliant array of churchly millinery and altar- furniture is seen mistily through 
clouds of incense. 

It is half-past eleven o'clock, and the organ still rolls; priest has relieved priest 
in the nasal sing-song reading of the " First and Second Gospels ' ' in Latin, anthem 
has succeeded chant, the bishop has been undressed and re-dressed twice, as to 
slippers, robe and headgear. The lofty, steepled hat, gleaming with gold and 
precious stones, has been placed over his white hairs and taken off again so many 
times that we have stopped counting. The chairs are hard; the air is stifling; 
except for two student-like men near me, who speak English and are probably per- 
verts to the Roman Catholic Church, nobody in the audience, that I can see, makes 
any pretence of following the service. These men read silently all the while from 



374 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



Latin Testaments, and when I ask Mrs. Jamal in an undertone the meaning of 
some manoeuvre of the ecclesiastical forces, one turns to offer me a book taken 
from his pocket. 

" Perhaps you would like to read the Gospels as they go on?" 

Declining with thanks, I note that his accent is American, that he wears a 
strait-breasted, long-skirted coat and a plain, high collar fastened at the back of 
his neck. His companion is as evidently English. 

Ten minutes of twelve ! Many men have sat down upon the marble floor, 
crossing their legs under them and gone to sleep; among the white- veiled ranks 




GREAT SQUARE AT NOON. 

of kneeling women I see some who have had the wisdom, or good luck, to get 
close to the great pillars and now rest tired heads against the cool stone, eyes fast 
shut — perhaps in devotion. A significant pause in the peal of the organ and 
responses from the two lines of choir-boys causes a stir in the crowd. Indiffer- 
ence and drowsiness are exchanged for alert interest. Raised heads are turned 
toward the high altar, above which I observe for the first time a curtain hung 
before what may be a niche or a painting, perhaps two feet long, and half as 
high. After a low prelude, the organ glides into a lullaby, sweet and tender and 



THE FlyAG OF THE ORIENT. 



375 



tuneful, that has in it the very swing of the cradle, and the brooding love in 
mother-heart and the mother' s voice. It is still sighing through the now strangely- 
quiet church when the curtain hiding the niche above the altar is drawn back by 
an unseen cord or hand, and we see — a cradle, with a doll lying in it ! 

To those about me what is to me an anti-climax, belittling the august pre- 
liminaries, and inconceivably unworthy of the occasion that has collected the vast 
audience — is apparently impressive and affecting. Men stand on tiptoe to gaze; 
many bow their heads, and some kneel as if overcome by emotion; women are 
convulsed by sobs, or smile lovingly through tears. Not even the glorious Gloria 
in Excelsis that rolls a triumphant volume of sound up to the embrowned rafters 
that have been jarred by the Angels' Song for over a thousand years, brings back 
to me one symptom of the feeling I have striven all day long to encourage, in 
Spite of Bishop's toilettes and a host of other (to me) senseless mummeries. In 
the abrupt revulsion from thoughts of Mary the handmaid of the Eord, and of the 
Birth, which was a world's redemption, I find myself sick in body as in heart, and 
were I not wedged in the crowd to an extent that would make extrication a work 
of time and disturbance, I should beg to be allowed to leave the church. 

As the drawn curtain and the pealing Gloria proclaim the Event of the 
evening, the packed aisles are agitated by an arrival. Two amazingly-appareled 
kervasses bearing long, gilded staves, force a passage for a trim, natty little gentle- 
man, military in bearing and in the white " imperial " tuft upon his chin. Keen- 
eyed and suave, he is conducted to a chair immediately in front of us. 

"The French Consul !" whispers Mrs. Jamal. 

The Roman Catholic Church in Palestine is under the immediate protection 
of France, and the homage paid to the handsome little man may savor of gratitude. 
Sitting erect and portentously attentive, a gorgeous kervasse upon each side, he is 
the most distinguished personage present, even before two priests part themselves 
from the crowd of ecclesiastics and approach him while the choir-boys chant 
melodiously. One of the priests bears what looks like a gold plate about six 
inches in diameter, and bending respectfully offers it to the lips of the consul, who 
arises at his approach and kisses the gold disk, whatever it may be. Somebody 
explains that it is " the Seal," but what Seal or why thus presented and saluted, 
I am unable to learn. In equal ignorance as to the meaning of the marching and 
countermarching; the kneelings and uprisings, and especially the robings and the 
unrobings of the majestic Chief of the hour, I sit for two-and-a-half mortal hours 
longer, a miserable fixture in my uncomfortable chair. The Third and Fourth 
Gospels are intoned in Latin by a third and a fourth glittering priest; all read and 
chant through their noses, and it is within bounds to assert that not fifty out of 
the hundreds assembled in this, the oldest church in the Holy Eand, comprehend 
one syllable of what is uttered. 



376 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



And still the white-veiled women continue to kneel in the aisle, their faces 
turned altarward, and the motley-hued garments of the men are pressed close 
together in the body of the church. 

" They will not stir until the Baby is carried around," says my interpreter, 
when I wonder that the crowd does not thin. 

At half-past two, ' ' the Bab}^ 1 ' is borne in solemn procession of all the priests, 
amid chanting and organ thunder, and the adoration of the now wide-awake and 
excited people, down one aisle and across the end of the church, then up another 



aisle and back to its resting-place near the high-altar. It is a large wax doll, 
gowned in lawn and lace, not a particularly pretty, but a very artificial baby. It 
goes without saying that we do not prostrate ourselves as it passes, but there are 
not many other exceptions to the rule of what may not be worship in very deed, 
but is so much like it that the uninitiated are excusable for drawing no distinction 
between the two. 

In the crush of the retiring spectators at the door, I am hustled against Mrs. 
Sharpe, and she seizes my hand in both of hers, speechless with emotion. 

I remark in a voice that must sound jaded, that I had seen Dr. Sharpe across 
the church, but without her, and supposed her absent. 




FIELD OF THE SHEPHERDS. 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 377 

" I have passed the whole evening upon my knees in the Grotto !" she sighs, 
hysterically. " I was never so blissfully happy before in my life." 

Arrived at the hotel, which is full to overflowing, I go at once to my room, 
and to bed, cold, disgusted, disappointed, and, I doubt not, disagreeable to my 
patient attendant who does her best to mitigate physical malaise by a cup of hot 
tea, and by a hot-water bag tucked between the chilly sheets. 

At intervals during the hour that elapses between bidding her " Good-night " 
and falling asleep, I hear the measured fall of footsteps upon the roof overhead, 
sounds that recall, with soothing efficacy, my twilight promenade and reverie. 

In the morning I learn that Alcides has walked there, and alone, under the 
silent stars until half-past- three. 

" To restore the balance you know," he remarks, concisely. 

I do know ! 



CHAPTER XUL 



STILL IN BETHLEHEM, 

OHE Grotto of the Nativity is reached by a stone staircase of thirteen 
steps leading down from the church. It is a natural cave, and the 
church, having been built directly over it, shuts out the light of day. 
Before visiting Bethlehem, we have carefully looked into the 
evidence tending to substantiate the genuineness of the claims of the grotto to the 
high honor bestowed upon it by the Christian world. A few sentences on this 
head may not be amiss here. 

One of the earliest authorities who has left on record any information as to 
the birthplace of Our L,ord was Justin Martyr, whose generation overlapped that 
of the Apostle John. St. John lived to be nearly one hundred years old, and Jus- 
tin Martyr, less than one hundred and fifty years after the birth of Christ, says 
explicitly that his I^ord was born in a cave very near to the village of Bethlehem. 
This Christian Father of the early Church was a native of the ancient Shechem 
(now Nablous), and very possibly may have himself talked with John. It is 
nearly certain that he must have known people who recollected hearing in child- 
hood the wonderful story of the Messiah's miracles, death and resurrection from 
their parents who had been eye-witnesses of these things. Every student of 
Roman history as associated with the early life of the Church is familiar with 
Hadrian's daring impiety in planting a grove and building an altar to Adonis over 
the grotto in which the Jewish peasant, whose followers were turning the world 
upside down, was said to have been born of a virgin. This was done between 
1 1 7-1 38 A. D. Fifty or sixty years after Hadrian's death, Origen, another of the 
early fathers, writes that even the pagans acknowledged the cave to be the place 
where Christ was born. In the fourth century, the saintly Jerome took up his 
abode in a neighboring cave that he might study and write, live and die, as near 
as might be to the spot of his ford's Incarnation. A church had already been 
built upon the exact site once desecrated by the idolatrous rites commanded by 
the Roman Hadrian. 

When the Crusaders occupied Bethlehem, they found Christians there treas- 
uring with pious zeal the tales handed down to them of the honors lavished upon 
their town, the city of David, and the birthplace of David's lineal descendant. 
There are still families in Bethlehem who pride themselves upon the intermar- 
riages of ancestresses with the Crusaders, and upon the superior physical and 
mental strain that survives to this day in the offspring of these unions. 

(378) 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



379 



In all ages, and among all sects of Christians, there has no been doubt as to 
the truth of the statement that Our Lord was born in the place where we now 
stand. The exact spot is said to be the arched recess directly before us. The 
first thought with the devout visitor is invariably a regret that the natural walls of 
rough rock appear only in two or three parts of the cave, and, especially, that the 
shrine of shrines is overlaid with colored marbles and further adorned with gold 
and silver — a display 
that absolutely vul- 
garizes it. A silver 
star let into the mar- 
ble floor of the semi- 
circular niche is 
kept bright by the 
tears and kisses of 
pilgrims. We do not 
kiss it, but we kneel 
to lay a reverent 
hand upon the sym- 
bol of the Eight of 
the World, the Star 
of Bethlehem. 

"Here Jesus 
Christ was born of 
the Virgin Mary" 
is the translation of 
the Latin inscription. 

We are sorry, 
on some accounts, to 
have visited it for 
the first time at a 
season when throngs 
of devotees make 
quiet meditation im- 
practicable. We Russian pilgrims. 

have to move aside almost immediately to make way for those who are waiting 
for their turn to prostrate themselves and press their lips, to the star. A crowd of 
Russian pilgrims have walked up from Jerusalem this morning. Most of them are 
peasant women, past middle age, and it goes to my heart to see them kneel, mutely, 
one after another, here and touch the holy spot with forehead and mouth, kissing it 
passionately, over and over, sometimes sobbing quietly, yet never uttering a word. 





(38o) 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



38i 



Light from a semi -circle of silver lamps suspended by silver chains shows the 
Star, the vari-colored marbles, and above, the embroidered lambrequin hung from 
a marble shelf furnished with its usual appurtenances of a Roman Catholic altar. 
This is guarded by a gilded grating from careless or sacrilegious touch. We are 
thankful that the space beneath has no such defence. 

We bestow but a glance upon the so-called Manger, disfigured by ecclesiastical 
millinery, and fenced about with gilded wires behind which swing more silver 
lamps. Overhead, an- 
gels hold a scroll in- 
scribed in Latin with 
the angel's song: 
"Peace on Earth, 
Good- will to Men . ' ' 
We care even less to 
linger at the altar 
erected where, as the 
Church has it, the 
Three Wise Men 
adored the Holy 
Child. The sacristan 
shows us, also, the 
place of Joseph' s warn- 
ing dream and the 
crypt in which the 
slaughtered Bethlehem 
babies were buried. 

We do not pretend 
to believe in the 
authenticity of any, or 
all of these legendary 
localities, but vve listen 
interestedly to some- 
thing Mrs. Jamal has 
to say apropos to this 
crypt. It is said that there are always more boys than girls born in Bethlehem, 
and that they are stronger and handsomer than the boys of other Palestine 
towns. 

' ' Because the dear Lord will make up to Bethlehem women through all the 
ages for what they suffered and lost when the Innocents were killed." 

It is a beautiful thought, and we cannot deny that we have, before hearing the 




BACK-STREET IN BETHLEHEM. 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



383 



tradition, remarked upon the number of fine-looking urchins playing in the streets 
and attending the services of the church with their mothers. 

The cave tenanted by St. Jerome is close at hand and in it his tomb is shown 
with that of Paula, the disciple to whom he refers in his works. 

As we come thoughtfully out of the upper church, David directs our attention 
to the venders of 
crosses, beads, paint- 
ed candles and other 
mementoes of Beth- 
lehem, who have 
stalls or tables in the 
vestibule, and even 
hawk their wares 
just inside of the 
doors. There are act- 
ually money changers 
just outside, ready 
to take up and ex- 
change foreign coins 
for Turkish money. 

' 1 It was such as 
these that Christ our 
Lord drove out of the 
Temple, declaring 
that they had made it 
a den of thieves," he 
utters in grave disap- 
probation. 

We go in quest 
of David's well un- 
der the conduct of 
our worthy drago- 
man, who takes us to 
three, all having equal claims upon our credulity. We refrain from mentioning 
the unsatisfactory search during a visit we pay to an old inhabitant of Bethlehem 
and a chief among his people, w T ho will have us drink a tumbler of water ' ' from 
the well of Bethlehem which is by the gate. ' ' There are several mouths to the 
one spring of living water upon the ridge on which the city is built, and there are 
no signs of a gate there now, but the old inhabitant may be in the right. He is 
an imperious, yet jolly and kindly patriarch, and has a history. In earlier and 




DAUGHTER AND DAUGHTER-IN-I.AW. 



3«4 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



troublous times he exercised a sort of sheikship in the territory around Bethle- 
hem, having such influence with his lawless neighbors that he was frequently 
chosen to escort travelers through doubtful passes and over hills that had more 
than doubtful reputation. As David tells me this in English, the host catches his 
meaning and points proudly to his gun, sword and spear hung against the wall. 

Christmas is a uni- 
versal holiday, and 
the retired potentate 
is in high feather, re- 
ceiving our party and 
other visitors. He 
sits cross-legged in a 
corner, a snowy tur- 
ban setting off his 
swarthy face, which 
is strong and intelli- 
gent, and issues or- 
ders to each member 
of the household staff. 
His wife, his married 
daughter and a daugh- 
ter-in-law are at his 
beck and call, and a 
relative who chances 
to drop in, is bidden 
to pound the coffee 
roasted by the ex- 
sheik himself, after 
one woman has 
brought it, another 
the shovel in which it 
is to be browned, and 
a third has blown up 
the fire in the char- 
coal brazier before him. With palpable enjoyment of the little bustle of prepara- 
tion, he turns the hot grains into an olive-wood mortar which is, he tells us, an 
heir-loom in his family, and scolds the guest good-naturedly, but dictatorially, 
for not beating the ' ' grinding-tune ' ' in proper time against the seasoned sides of 
the vessel. His daughter has a Madonna-face; the daughter-in-law a beautiful. 
Yet, as Mrs. Jamal tells me aside, the handsome son had set his fancy upon 




ROOM, 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



another woman, and even dared to reason with the parent who ordered him to 
espouse the village beauty. 

" Marry her, or leave my house !" rejoined the father. " You will obey me, 
or be no longer my son. ' ' 

We agree privately that the family despot is not a bad type of Jesse in dignity 
and authority, and the impression deepens with each minute of our stay in this 
better-class household. The son is now very happy in his father's choice, we are 
told, and that his sad eyes are the expression of bodily illness,— a sort of low fever 
he cannot shake off. He smiles pleasantly, and even proudly, as the bride of three 
months' standing, to please us, retires to her room and puts on her wedding-dress, 
returning blushingly for our inspection. The gown is of red and green silk, in 
alternate "gores " of each color, put together with a sort of herring-bone pattern 
done in red and green. Over this is worn an embroidered jacket, parting over a 
vest wrought in many stitches and colors. Upon her head is a stiff, helmet-like 
cap of green-and-red woolen stuff, made upon a pasteboard frame, and bordered 
above the forehead with overlapping rows of gold coins. Strings of silver 
"pieces" depend from the sides and join below her chin in one large gold coin. 
These are an important part of her dowry, and after marriage she seldom lays off 
the heavy head-dress, even sleeping in it. 

I exclaim at this : 

" I should think it would make your head ache !' ' 

"It did, at first. Now, my head aches if I do not wear it." 

The weight of the cumbrous thing is materially increased by a linen veil, richly 
wrought at the ends with silk thread in an intricate pattern. It is three yards long 
and a yard wide. The texture and needle- work of these veils vary with the means 
and station of the wearer. Girls wear veils of linen or cotton, but not the stiff 
construction beneath it. 

The host got a good price in exchange for his Madonna- faced daughter when 
he bestowed her in marriage, but had to pay a larger for his son's wife, who is 
reckoned as yet comelier by kindred and neighbors. 



25 




(336) 



CHAPTER XUII 



JAFFA. 

BOTH the carriage-road and railway from Jerusalem to Jaffa run through 
Samson's country, the stamping-ground of the long-maned, strong- 
backed, soft-hearted Nazarite. A village of new, neat farm-houses, 
one of Rothschild's colonies, is in the immediate vicinity of Zorah, the 
home of " a certain man of the family of the Danites whose name was Manoah," 
and the birthplace of his son. A large rock, lately uncovered, is supposed, from 
indications that it was used as an altar, to be that upon which the Danite offered 
the kid unto the Lord: 

1 'And it came to pass when the flame went up toward heaven from off the 
altar, that the angel of the Lord ascended in the flame of the altar, and Manoah 
and his wife looked on." 

Samson's range in his fightings with the Philistines, and his courtings of 
divers women, lay between the hills on either side of the road. Zorah, Kkron, 
Gath, Kirjathjearim, Gaza, the rock Etam, Lehi — are names that suggest the 
years upon years of warring with the original lords of the land who were a chronic 
pest to the conquerors. The House of Dagon at Ashdod has left no trace upon 
the landscape of to-day; Ashdod itself is represented by a few poor mud huts 
roofed with straw and turf. 

Gezer, made a City of Refuge by Joshua, and afterward taken by Pharaoh of 
Egypt, rebuilt and given by him to his daughter, one of Solomon's wives, crowns 
a hill on the right of the road. Far up the heights on the left is the cave of 
Makkedah (also lately discovered), in which Joshua cooped the five kings until 
the battle was won, when " he smote them, and slew them, and hanged them on 
five trees, ' ' afterwards casting their bodies into the cave and laying great stones 
upon the cave's mouth, " which remain until this very day." 

From the brook (marginal reading "valley," now a wide, dry water-bed, 
paved with loose white pebbles), crossed more than once by our track, David took 
the five smooth stones for his sling, and somewhere in this same valley was the 
great fight between Saul and the Philistines who ' ' stood on a mountain on the 
one side, while Israel stood on a mountain on the other side, and there was a 
valley between them." It is impossible to designate the exact spot where the 
stripling confronted Goliath of Gath, but we select a locality to please ourselves 
and fight the battle over to our satisfaction. 

(387) 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



389 



" Lydda was nigh unto Joppa," when Peter, tarrying in the smaller town 
with resident saints, healed Eneas who had been bed-ridden for eight years, — in 
the sublimely simple formula — " Eneas ! Jesus Christ maketh thee whole. Arise, 
and make thy bed !" 

He was still a sojourner in Lydda when summoned to Joppa by the news of 
Dorcas' s death. The village is brought so near to the seaport by rail that a touch of 
New World enterprise would make it a suburb easily accessible for merchants who 
care for purer air than is to be had in the narrow streets of modern Jaffa. The 
Crusaders set their stamp upon Eydda in the form of a noble church built above 




OIJVE GROVE NEAR JAFFA. 



the alleged burial-place of St. George, the patron saint of England, and coupled 
in everybody's mind with the dragon. The remains of this structure, dating from 
the twelfth century, are amiably shared by the Greek Church and the Moslems, 
part of them being used as a mosque. Besides this building there is nothing of 
interest in the squalid village. 

The approach to Jaffa is heralded by groves of orange and olive trees. Bleak 
hills, where the only signs of human habitation are villages of low stone houses, 
the materials being taken in many cases from the ruins of citadels and walled 
towns, make way for sand-dunes drifted from the seashore by winds that make the 
harbor of Jaffa a word of terror all over the world. Fertile patches fight with 
these — sometimes victoriously, sometimes with such indifferent success that the 



39° 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



fringes of grass and starved-looking grain edge oases of vines and fig-lands, and 
end abruptly in yellow sand. Then, the orange groves thicken into orchards, 
encircled by hedges of prickly-pear with big, fleshy leaves and ugly stalks as 
crooked as snakes and as large as a man's arm, and we plunge suddenly into a laby- 
rinth of alleys, lined with dirty stone houses, standing flush with the pavement— 
the usual, and now the old story in Syrian towns. One of these conducts us to 
the Jerusalem Hotel, a rambling building of various ages, over the modest door- 
way which we read, " Go through, go through the gates ! " Gardens lie behind 




CAMELS LADEN WITH JAFFA ORANGES. 

it, and by the way of these we go to see the house of Simon the Tanner, where 
Peter lodged. While neither of us believes that the unpretending building, evi- 
dently not more than five hundred years old, and which may be less, is that once 
occupied by the apostle's landlord, it is quite possible that the site may be the 
same. Tanning has been the business of the locality for perhaps twenty centuries, 
and the always restless surf of Jaffa booms against the sea-wall bounding the court- 
yard. We pay to enter this, the fee being taken by a man in the garb of a Mos- 
lem priest, the care-taker of the shabby mosque of which Simon's house is an 
appanage. Another man, similarly attired, lowers a skin bucket into the old well 
in the yard and gives us to drink of the water. It is exceedingly brackish and 



392 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



salt as might be expected. We pluck a few leaves from the fig-tree overhanging 
it and ascend the short staircase built upon the side of the house, to the flat roof. 
It is surrounded, like the pretty nest on the house-top we visited in Jerusalem, 
with hollow tiles, arranged horizontally in geometrical designs and set in cement, 
for the convenience of Moslem women who would peep at the world. A parapet 
of some sort was about the house-top chosen by Peter as an oratory, ' ' a battlement 
for thy roof " being one of the laws of Moses. The fisherman-disciple certainly 
never fell into a trance upon these cemented stones, yet the scene spread out for him 

— 




STREET IN OED JAFFA. 

that noon-tide, before the miraculous vision locked his senses against external ob- 
jects, was like in general features that upon which our eyes now fasten eagerly. 
The great and wide sea — the " utmost sea " seen by Moses' dying eyes — the Medi- 
terranean, blue, seductive and treacherous of mood and meaning, rolled and thun- 
dered then against a jetty built by a Roman Emperor. The ruins of this now 
make dangerous the always difficult business of landing and embarkation. The 
hills, the distant line of mountains, the ineffable blue of the smiling heavens, were 
beautiful then as they are now. But the town had in Peter's time a wall and 



394 



THE FlyAG OF THE ORIENT. 



a Roman garrison, and commodious inlets where had been moored Hiram's floats 
laden with Lebanon cedar for the Temple in building at Jerusalem. 

"And Majarkon and Rakkon with the border before (over against) Japho," 
( Joppa) were deeded to the Danites in Joshua's grants of Palestine lands. From 
Joppa, Jonah sailed for Tarshish (probably in Spain) instead of to Nineveh. The 
territory and town still belonged at that date to the Phoenicians, from whom the 
Hebrews had never been able to take them. Joppa has been a bone of contention 
among ' ' Turks, infidels and Jews, ' ' and enough blood has been shed in defence 
and conquest of this rough key to the Mediterranean to dye the blue waters 
crimson. In using the figure we look toward the east at a group of sand-dunes 
pale-yellow in the sunlight, that should be forever red. There Napoleon — the 
great Napoleon — had three thousand prisoners shot in platoons, to avoid the 
trouble and expense of transportation to Egypt. 

On our way to the hotel we meet a funeral procession; turn aside to let it pass 
and then follow the line of march through the very muddiest streets we have ever 
seen, even in Palestine. Not one person in the company of mourners has shoes, 
or even sandals on his feet; the men wear abiehs and turbans, the women gowns 
of dark-blue cotton, and white (by courtesy) izzars. They are not too much 
afflicted to hold these up, we perceive, when the puddles reaching clear across the 
street are unusually deep. The bier is borne upon the shoulders of four men. 
Our guide makes us notice that it is an unpainted open box, so shallow that the 
breast, shoulders and profile of the corpse are visible from the ground. 

"He was poor, and the friends cannot afford a new coffin. This has been 
used many times already. Rich people have new and handsome coffins, which are 
sometimes buried with them. You hear that they sing happy songs," continues 
the speaker, a Jaffa man, and an acquaintance of David. 1 ' That means that he 
was a good man. He made a pilgrimage to Mecca but latel} T , so short a time ago 
that he has, the Moslems think, surely gone to the bosom of the Prophet. He has 
not had time for much sin since. So nobody cries, and the hymns are glad. ' ' 

Maybe so, to an ear cultivated into an appreciation of Syrian melody. To us, 
the happy hymns are as dolorous as dirges, and like all other Moslem music, tune- 
less, but for a rhythmic beat of time such as a drum-stick brings from a drum in 
the intervals of march or quick-step. The chanting of Southern negroes in ante- 
bellum days, of long sentences all upon one or, at best, two notes, was something 
akin to the nasal sing-song to which the motley crew splash through pools in the 
lanes and the stiffer mire of the market-place, where not a man or woman turns out 
of his way to make room for them — up to the door of the mosque, where we leave 
them. 

Our solitary call in Jaffa is upon Miss Arnott, the principal of one of the best 
schools in the Holy Eand, now over thirty years in successful operation. Since 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



395 



leaving Beir^., we have not sat in a room that reminded us of home so forcibly as 
the pleasant parlor where we are entertained by the true gentlewoman and philan- 
thropist to whom is due the good accomplished by this great light in a dark place. 
David Jamal has two daughters here, one engaged in teaching where she was her- 
self taught, the other as a pupil. All the native assistants are graduates of the 
school, and the gentle dignity of the principal is reflected in the deportment of 
her subordinates. Dismissing David, and sending Alcides with him, I have a 
long and, to me, deeply interesting talk with Miss Arnott. She left home and 
country in her youth to devote her whole life to the task of lifting her fellow- 
women out of the depths wherein the}- have lain for ages of despotic rule and 
unspeakable degradation. She has laid hold of the only hope for her sex in Syria, 
and toiled hopefully for the girls who are to be the wives and mothers of the next 
generation. After all these decades of patient labor and manifold discourage- 
ments, she sees her school a recognized power in the land and sits, a queen-mother, 
among her grateful children-in-heart. 



CHAPTER XUV. 



DRAGOMANS AND HOTELS. 

EXT to health and the resolution to make the best of everything, a 
^| ■ good dragoman is the most important factor in the sum of Palestine 
I r travel. As the country becomes more accessible to the visitor from 
*^ toreign lands, the supply of guides and interpreters increases. I 

should like to add that preparation for the profession is more thorough than when 
there was not one- tenth as many who followed it. 

The first and indispensable qualification for the position of dragoman to 
American tourists is, of course, a knowledge of the English language. The 
number of schools established throughout Syria has greatly facilitated this object, 
and made it an easy matter, moreover, to get a smattering of history and archae- 
ology that impresses the superficial observer with the apparent intelligence of the 
native displaying it. The respectful attention with which he is heard raises his 
opinion of himself, already inflated by the consciousness of superiority to his 
uneducated fellow country-people. He can speak English, and usually French, as 
well, and they only Arabic; he wears better clothes than they and knows some- 
thing of European ways of living and behaving. In Ms capacity of guide and 
interpreter, he is continually consulted by his party, and a tolerable degree of 
familiarity with routes and the history of the places visited exalts him into a per- 
sonage of importance. But for him the tourist could not make a purchase, or 
exchange his gold for Turkish coins, or so much as ask for a drink of water. 
Being, as a rule a man of less than ordinary breeding to begin with, a son of the 
people, his head is turned by his new position, and he assumes — not unreason- 
ably—that, like the storied "little ostrich," he "knows it all." 

Such specimens of the genus dragoman, flashily -dressed in the uniform of 
the guild, swagger in the corridors and ante-rooms of hotels, and exchange loud 
greetings in the market-place, and haunt places of interest on, or off escort duty, 
rattling off statistic and tradition, and directing the movements of " parties " with 
assurance becoming appreciation of the little brief authority inseparable from 
the office. The duties of a dragoman, as the better-behaved and better-informed 
of the class comprehend, are to conduct the tourist in safety and comfort over the 
proposed line of travel; to guard him from imposition; to cater to his tastes, not 
only as to food, but in the style of entertainment offered him, and to give him full 
and trustworthy abstracts of the history and legends associated with each place 

(397) 



398 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



visited. In all this, he is, nevertheless, to hold himself subject to tne wishes and 
fancies of those he has in charge. However important in his estimation it may be 
that the party shall visit this ruin, or see that form of amusement peculiar to the 
country, it is his part, having once laid the case before them, to abide cheerfully 
by their decision, whether to follow his respectful advice or their own caprice. 
He is paid to wait upon their pleasure, not to play the dictator or master. 

Our own experience with our incomparable dragoman prepared us to criticise 
with surprise and indignation what we characterized as the " freshness " of others 




"our incomparable dragoman." 



we chanced to meet. I well remember the glow of resentment with which I turned 
upon a young fellow to whom, while David was busy elsewhere with my son, was 
deputed the duty of showing me the way back to the hotel. 

" Have you other sons?" he amazed me by inquiring presently. 

"No," I answered, stiffly. 

" Won't you take me to America with you ? I would be another son to you." 
" You will please call one of those donkey-boys over there," was my only 
reply, " I will ride the rest of the way." 

In narrating the incident afterward to a resident of Jerusalem, he explained 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



399 



what I took for insolence by telling of several instances of formal adoption of 
good-looking young dragomans by wealthy Americans, subjoining incidents that 
transferred my displeasure from the vain, but ignorant, native to the traveling 
American. It is not unusual, according to this informant, and others who have 
had equal opportunities of observation of the relations of tourist and guide, for 
travelers from our free and independent country, to insist that the dragomans should 
sit at the table with them while in camp, and to treat them in all other respects 
as equals, and even as honored guests. American girls will walk arm-in-arm with 
favorite dragomans in the streets of Damascus, Beirut and Jerusalem; run races 
with them on the plains and down the hills, divide an orange or apple with a nice- 
looking Syrian guide, eating half and giving him the other; eat bonbons from the 
same box, and — I blush to say — smoke cigarettes with them. Sometimes, when 
the guide is especially prepossessing and entertaining, the Daisy Miller of oriental 
journey in gs goes so far as to carry on a lively flirtation that amuses her and utterly 
spoils the native of a country where the frank, innocent association of the sexes is 
absolutely unknown. 

Before visiting the Holy Land, the traveler should obtain through trustworthy 
sources the address of a really competent dragoman — one conversant with every 
step of the proposed tour, honest and intelligent, and who will make the cause of 
his charge his own from the moment he enters upon his duties. It is the habit of 
many — as we found to our cost in Cairo and Alexandria — to make common cause 
with merchants who pay them commissions upon every sale arranged by the drago- 
man. After two months of David Jamal's jealous watchfulness over our interests, 
it was a shock when our guide to the Pyramids and the Sphinx protested almost 
angrily against our call at a shop near both, where we wished to buy souvenir 
spoons. 

" My travelers are never allowed to do their own buying," he asserted. 

* ' There was Mr. , from Buffalo, New York, who bought five hundred pounds* 

worth of things in Cairo, and left the whole business to me. I choose them, I 
settle on the price, I pay the money, and he ask not one question." 

Upon learning that the money spent by us in Cairo would probably not exceed 
five pounds, he became sulky and washed his hands of the whole transaction. The 
traveler is a veritable victim in the hands of such a man, powerless to protect his 
pocket and hardly able to defend himself against insult. He is wise who, at the 
first sign of arbitrariness, declares his rights and his intention to maintain them. 

"How do you like your dragoman?" I inquired of a Prussian officer whom 
we met in Bethlehem. 

I had noticed the fellow in Jerusalem and been disagreeably impressed by his 
smirking effrontery and the bullying tone used to a party of unsophisticated 
American women and children. 



400 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



"Oh, he is quite tolerable if I kick him (figuratively) three times a day. 
Unless I do he is simply unbearable." 

Before positively engaging a dragoman, one should, by letter, arrange every 
particular of the journey, settle everything relative to a time, expenses, etc., and 
have a written contract drafted, to be signed by both parties. The arrangements for 
the tour which we have just happily completed were made six months prior to our 
arrival in Syria, and I record with satisfaction that every provision of the contract 
was fulfilled to the letter and in spirit. Not one unpleasant word was ever spoken 
by one of the parties concerned in the expedition; we never saw a sullen look upon 
the face of an attendant, or failed to get a ready and courteous response to any 
request. 

After the frequent tributes paid in these chapters to the worth and services of 
our dragoman, it would seem superfluous to recommend him in terms of unquali- 
fied approbation to any who may have in view a visit to the Holy Land. Mrs. 
Oliphant, the English authoress, in the preface to her book of Syrian travel, 
alludes to David Jamal as 1 ' the Providence of our little party. ' ' He also con- 
ducted Canon Tristram, the Prince of Wales, Dean Stanley, and other eminent 
personages through Palestine, and always with the same result of perfect satis- 
faction to the traveler. Of our obligations to him personalty I have not room to 
speak, but I must cite him as an acknowledged authority, even among scholars, in 
all pertaining to the history, the ruins and antiquities of his native and beloved 
land. His Biblical knowledge is wonderful; his reverence for holy things modest 
and unaffected; his character for integrity and honor unimpeachable. His address 
is simply, "David Jamal, Jertisalem, Syria.' 1 '' 

It gives me pleasure to speak here of his friend and late partner, Demetrius 
Domian, as an excellent guide and intelligent dragoman. Were I to revisit Syria 
.-and could not get David Jamal, I should undoubtedly endeavor to secure Domian 's 
services. His home upon the house-top, overlooking the Valley of Jehoshaphat 
^nd Mount of Olives, is the prettiest nook we found in Jerusalem. 

He who expects to see in any Syrian caravanserai the elegant ' ' conveni- 
ences ' ' of Parisian and American hotels, is doomed to sore and certain disappoint- 
ment. The nearest approach to these was found in the Grand New Hotel in 
Jerusalem, where the ingenious thoughtfulness of Mr. Gelat, the manager, goes 
far toward compensating for the lack of appliances for properly heating in cold 
weather a house built with express reference to long, intense summers, and for the 
impossibility of procuring fresh milk, butter and fruits. It is within bounds to 
•say that no one can suffer other than minor inconveniences under his care. 

The Hotel d' Orient in Beirut, while inferior to the Grand New of Jerusalem 
in furniture, fare and general comfort, is considered the best in that city. 

The Hotel Dimitri in Damascus outranks the d' Orient of Beirut in sanitary 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 401 

provisions, in the variety and preparation of food, and in the appointments of 
table and chambers. 

Everywhere men are employed as chambermaids, an awkward circumstance 
in sickness, and indeed at all times when the travelers are women, and unaccom- 
panied by their own maids. After a while one gets used (comparatively) to the 
queer order of service, as likewise to the deprivation of many refinements she 
once esteemed essential to a moderate degree of bodily well-being. 

In bidding farewell to the patient reader who has kept pace with me to this 
final " Talk," I must blend with thanks for his courtesy and forbearance, grateful 
acknowledgments to a few of the many whose counsels and timely assistance in 
the hour of need have filled up deep places, leveled hills, and led us by ways of 
pleasantness and paths of peace, back to home and friends. 

To Mr. Eouis Klopsch, of New York, whose was the inception of the project 
of our Oriental tour, we owe more than to any other man who forwarded the long- 
coveted end. His wise foresight provided for our convenience and pleasure at 
every stage of the journey, and each arrangement was made upon a scale of 
kindly generosity which is beyond praise. 

To the Faculty of the Protestant College at Beirut and their families for 
loving hospitality to the weary stranger within their gates; to Rev. Joseph Jamal, 
of Jerusalem; to Dr. Sandrecsky, of the same place, and, in an especial degree, to 
Rev. Selah Merrill, D. D., LL. D., late U. S. Consul at Jerusalem, our thanks are 
due new and always, for a wealth of kindness and friendly aid that leaves us for 
ever and hopelessly in their debt. 

With us the pleasure and interest of our eventful jauntings " up and down in 
Palestine" so far outweighed the mishaps, that the latter are reduced in the 
retrospect to a minimum, — delicate shading thrown in here and there, to make 
brighter the lights that will never go out until Eternal Day breaks for us upon the 
shore beyond the river, and we know for ourselves the fadeless glories of the New 
Jerusalem that to mortals have never been told. 




26 



CHAPTER XLV. 



MY FRIENDS, THE MISSIONARIES. 




Y opposite neighbor at table upon the voyage from New York to South - 
i ampton in the autumn of 1893 was a young woman about twenty - 
' five years of age, whom I silently decided by the closing of the 
"» second day out, to be among the most interesting of my fellow-pas- 



sengers. In feature she was pleasing — even pretty — but her charm lay in a certain 
refinement of speech and manner, combined with quick intelligence and sensibility 
of expression. She was a lady in grain, and in education and conversation so far 
above the average of her age and sex, that when the crucial twenty- four hours of 
' ' slight unpleasantness ' ' to both of us were happily over, I made opportunity to 
cultivate our acquaintanceship. 

We were already good friends when, on the fourth night of our voyage — 
which chanced to be Sunday night — we were pacing the moonlighted deck 
together, and the talk took a personal, semi-confidential turn. The initiative step 
was my statement that I was bound for Palestine, the Promised Land of my life- 
long dreams, never before visited by me in body and in truth. My companion 
listened with flattering interest, and when I proposed jestingly that she should 
join me in Jerusalem, smiled brightly. 

" In other circumstances, nothing would give me more pleasure, but I, too, 
am going to a Promised Land. My destination is Rangoon." 

' ' Are you going alone ? ' ' 

' ' Alone — so far as human companionship is concerned. The friends with 
whom I was to have sailed left America a week ago. I was detained by a short, 
but severe illness. ' ' 

This was the preface to the story I drew from her in the intercourse that 
ripened fast into intimacy on ship-board. 

From childhood, she had known that she was " appointed," as she phrased 
it, to the Master's service in foreign lands. With the natural shrinking of youth 
from privation and toil, she had tried to get away from the conviction in various 
ways, entering, at twenty, upon the study of art as an experimental lesson in the 
expulsive power of a new affection. At twenty-three, she was impelled to reveal 
to her mother the struggle going on between conscience and expediency, and how 

(402) 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



403 



she could not escape from the persuasion that the Divine will urged her to conse- 
crate herself to the life of a foreign missionary. The mother's reply set the seal 
upon her purpose : 

44 Were I fifteen years younger I would go with you. As it is, let me fulfill 
my part of the mission by giving you up cheerfully. ' ' 

From that moment, the deep peace that entered the daughter's soul had never 
known a cloud. There was no sentimentality in language or ambition. She was 
not a dreamer, much less a fanatic. A clear-headed, resolute woman, she knew 
what she had undertaken, and counted the cost to the minutest detail. In putting 
her hand to the plough, she had grasped it, not hastily, but with staying power 
in the hold. In our long and earnest talks upon the subject, I appreciated for the 
first time, what constitutes "a call to the Mission Field." Since then I have 
thought and spoken of it with reverence, as something with which a stranger to 
such depths of spiritual conflict and such heights of spiritual enlightenment as 
hers, may not intermeddle. 

My last glimpse of her was in the Waterloo Station, London. We had said 
" Good-bye " upon the train and I was seated in a carriage awaiting the disposi- 
tion of our luggage, when she passed, under the escort of a clergyman who had 
met her upon our arrival. She caught sight of me, stepped hastily to the open 
door of my carriage, and the electric light showed the ineffable white peace of the 
smile with which she kissed her hand to me silently and made a slight, but elo- 
quent, upward motion. Then, the crowd and the London night swallowed her 
up, and I saw her face no more. 

The recollection of her had much to do with the resolution that moved me, a 
month later, to seek an interview with a party of missionaries who, I heard 
accidentally, were voyaging with me upon a P. & O. steamship bound to India, 
via Port Said. The information came to me through the lips of one of the ship's 
officers who was my vis-a-vis at table. ' ' A jolly game of cards had been disturbed 
the night before by the psalm-singing of a pack of missionaries in the second 
cabin " he growled, " If they had sung something jolly, don't you know, the card 
party would not have minded it so much, although there was such a lot of them 
that they make a beastly racket — but hymn tunes have a way of making a fellow 
low in his mind-— don't you know ? " 

I had never heard until then of missionaries as second cabin voyagers, and the 
impression was unequivocally disagreeable. It is not agreeable down to the present 
hour, although I have learned how common it is for the Board at home (moved, 
presumably, by the churches at home) to economize in this way, especially when 
the voyage is long. My readers may not sympathize with the indignation that 
flushed up to my forehead at the coupling of the words ' 1 missionaries ' ' and 
" second cabin." It may be that the failure to fall in with my temper arises from 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



ignorance of the conditions of a six weeks voyage, second class, in a P. & O. 
steamship. The first cabin passage was inconvenient to discomfort to one used to 
Atlantic floating palaces. The linen was dingy and musty ; the food badly cooked 
and carelessly served ; the general debility of the milk and the sustained strength 
of the butter were matters of popular complaint. -Nothing was up to the Ameri- 
can standard of prime quality, except prices. 

I had looked over the rail separating the first from the second cabin, and mar- 
veled at the brave cheer of the less fortunate in their cramped quarters. Tell-tale 
odors from the kitchen and over-crowded sleeping cabin reached our olfactories ; 
children played and wrangled and romped, like beasts in a circus wagon, all day long. 

It was easy to account for the preference of men and women in all weathers 
for the strait bounds of deck-space allotted to them above remaining in doors. 

So, the flush still burned my forehead when, as soon as breakfast was over, I 
betook myself to the end of the ship where was located the second cabin, and, 
passing through the gate, asked a ruddy young Englishman if I might have speech 
with my friends, the missionaries. He w T as one of them, he said, pleasantly, and 
he had the whole band about me in a few minutes. Sixteen of them — all from 
Great Britain. Four Wesleyans, four Baptist, four from the Church of England, 
and four Congregationalists. My exclamation at the equal allotment to each 
denomination raised a laugh, and we were no longer strangers. In breeding and 
education the women were the superiors of those who lounged in sea-chairs under 
the double awning amidships, and murmured languidly at the heat and length of 
the voyage. Not a man of them was as scantily equipped with brains and 
behavior as the officer whose game their sacred music had disturbed. Fancy-work 
and plain sewing went on while the men took turns in reading aloud ; family 
prayers and bible readings were held in the cabin at stated hours, three violins 
and a flute made a tolerable orchestral accompaniment to the vocal music of the 
evening ; ship's coil and shuffle-board in a measure compensated for the lack of 
the long promenade of the first cabin. 

The cheerful contentment of the party was to me, astonishing. With one 
accord, they overlooked discomforts until they became glaringly obtrusive, then 
laughed at them. In American phrase, they were " in for a good time," and they 
had it. When questioned, all pitched the stories of personal experience in one 
and the same key. Of their own free will, and, after mature deliberation, they 
had entered upon a course they hoped to continue while life should last, and they 
rejoiced and were glad in it. Six of the sixteen were veterans in the foreign 
field ; five were the children of missionaries, who had been educated in England, 
and were going out to carry on the work begun by their parents. The peace 
that passed worldly understanding was not the serenity of ignorance. They knew 
what they were undertaking. 




GOLDEN GATE) JERUSALEM. 



406 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



A young man— a first-cabin passenger — who had heard with mingled wonder 
and cynicism the report of my visits to the ' ' psalm-singers, ' ' one day asked per- 
mission to accompany me. Being a gentleman, he quickly affiliated with the 
missionaries, and made the most of our call. It was evening, and, after bidding 
them " Good night" we walked the deck for awhile, he glancing, at each turn, at 
the group seated in the moonlight within the cabin doors. By-and-by, he gave, 
without prelude, his solution of the mystery of the happiness of such people in 
such circumstances. 

" They must love Him " — reverently raising his cap — " very much." 

In six words he had furnished the key to conduct that baffles the adepts in 
secular policy. It is a key that adjusts itself to every combination. 

Through the silence succeeding the unexpected remark, I seemed to hear, in 
the rush of the south wind that blew softly and the wash of the Mediterranean 
waves, — like the rhythm of a Gregorian chant : — 

" For I am persuaded that neither death , nor life, nor angels, nor principal- 
ities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come. 

Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from 
the love of God, which is in Christ fesus our Lord." 

In Beirut, Syria, I counted my friends, the missionaries, by the score. Dr. 
Post, the head of the Medical Department of the Protestant College in that place 
— which is, to all intents and purposes, a university — was our fellow passenger 
from Port Said, via Jaffa, and the first hand-clasp I had after we anchored in the 
Beirut offing, was from Dr. Bliss, the president. For ten days and more I was in 
hourly association with the noble body of professors and tutors, who, with their 
families, make up one of the most charming social circles it was ever my privilege 
to enter. 

During one of the calls with which Dr. Bliss honored me, he said with the air 
of a man who celebrates a happy anniversary : 

' ' Thirty-seven years ago to-day I left my native land for this place and work. ' ' 
' ' Have you never regretted it ? " 

' ' Regretted it ! In looking back to-day, my regret is that I have not, in the 
coarse of nature, thirty-seven years more to devote to the same cause." 

"We are sometimes spoken of as the gilt-edged mission," he continued. 
" But there are black edges to certain leaves of our history." 

^ This introduced a deeply interesting abstract of the early struggles of the 
mission band — then a feeble folk, — against half-hearted backers at home, Moslem 
distrust and jealousy, the apathy of the native population for whose sake personal 
ease and selfish ambition were killed all the day long. I had from an eye witness 
the particulars of the massacre of Christians by the Druses in 1862, and of the 
imminent danger of the American Mission. Of Dr. Bliss's ineffectual petition to 



408 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



the English Consul for o?ie man and an English flag, that the missionary might 
plead in person with the murderers. Hqw every native Christian man and boy 
in the settlements near Beirut was killed, and the women and girls were brought 
down from the ruins of their homes to fill to overflowing the Mission House, and 
be fed, nursed and clothed by the missionaries and their wives. Of an alarm of 
approaching peril that led to the flight by night under cover of the cactus hedges 
lining a lane running down to the pier, where lay a boat ready to convey the 
hunted American Christians to an English man-of-war. Babies were snatched from 
their beds and borne off by their parents, everything else of value being left for 
the pillagers. Of Mrs. Bliss's sigh, as she sped along in the midnight at her 
husband's side, — ' 'If we could only escape to the mountains ! ' ' and his reply, 
" God is our only refuge and strength, my dear. Look at the mountains ! " 

The Lebanon range, that at sunset had been as the Garden of the Lord in 
terraced luxuriance of vine and olive and fig tree, — was lurid with the glare of 
burning villages. 

' ' Now we have no hardships ! ' ' was said to me so often that I inferred the 
completeness of the missionaries' expatriation. Time and custom had, I supposed, 
reconciled them to the role of men without a country. The ties of land and home 
and kindred were weakened by the protracted tension upon patriotism and natural 
affection of absence and other interests. 

While confessing with shame the folly and injustice of the conclusion, I 
believe that the comparatively small number of American Christians who have 
ever given this side of the mission question a thought, have fallen or slidden into 
the same misapprehension. My opinion was reversed by the events of the 
Thanksgiving Day I passed in Beirut. At eight o'clock in the evening, — an hour 
corresponding as nearly as could be computed with the one o'clock dinner time at 
home — there was a social gathering of the garrison at the house of Professor Porter. 
I shall never participate in such another celebration of our national festival. Ad- 
dresses were made, prayer was offered for the far away native land, and we all 
sang as clearly as swelling hearts and aching throats would allow, ' ' My Country, 
'tis of Thee! " 

I comprehended that night what patriotism, pure, simple and utterly disinter- 
ested, is like ; a fire of devotion that had stood the chill of years, the creeping 
damps of foreign life and of interests utterly dissociated from American institu- 
tions. A patriotism absolutely divorced from politics is a phenomenon worth 
going half-way around the world to see. 

I diverge from the main line of my theme to relate in this connection an inci- 
dent of Dr. Bliss's visit to England in 1864, when the financial condition of the 
Beirut Mission and the distress of the parent land made an appeal to British Chris- 
tians imperatively necessary : 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



At a meeting of the friends of the mission, held in a London drawing-room, 
Dr. Bliss announced that he had raised $10,000 toward the sum needed to put the 
college upon a stable foundation. 

A jeering voice called out, — " In money 1 or in Yankee greenbacks? " 

Without the pause of a second, the reply rang back — 

1 ' I shall not use one cent of this amount until every dollar of the ten thous- 
and is worth a dollar in gold ! Nor shall I have long to wait ? ' ' 

He kept his word to the letter, and, as he had predicted, he had not long to wait. 

This is the stuff of which the men are made who have set the Beirut College 
and Mission upon the hill commanding the harbor, the stretch of the blue Mediter- 
ranean on the left, and, across an arm of the sea, the glory of Lebanon. I can 
compare this station to nothing more aptly than to the colossal figure whose uplifted 
torch gleams nightly over New York Bay. Like her, it proclaims liberty to the 
captives and the opening of the prison to them that are bound by the trammels of 
a false faith, and the tyranny of a besotted government. 

" You wonder at our contentment? " said one of the women missionaries to 
me. " I will show you a stranger thing if you will go with me a day's journey 
up the country." 

Let me take you, who now read, with us. 

Right in the heart of the hills upon the outskirts of the miserable Syrian 
village, is a house built of rough stones laid up in mud, and with a thatched roof. 
It differs from its neighbors mainly in having three rooms, where the others have 
but one. In it live an educated man and woman with two little children. In this 
mountain-parish, the American missionaries are school teachers, hospital nurses, 
preachers and physicians, laboring with hand and head from year to year, some- 
times seeing no white visitor for months together ; straitened for means to provide 
for the needs of the primitive household, — yet never so much as cast down, much 
less in despair. It is in a home like this that one enters into the fullness of the 
pledge — ' ' My peace I leave with you ; my peace I give unto you. Not as the world 
giveth, give 1 unto you . " 

' ' Not as the world giveth ! ' ' Else they had long ago been left comfortless — 
in exile, poor, toiling and destitute of all solace of friendship, social intercourse 
and intellectual stimulus. 

They were very cheerful, and very busy — this devoted pair, and inexpressibly 
thankful that the native women began to keep their homes cleaner, to be willing to 
have their girls taught to sew, and cook and read, and that a few men listened 
respectfully to such simple Bible stories as every child brought up in a Christian 
home knows by the time he is five years old. 

Not long ago I met an American Congregationalist, one of whose friends had, 
in a Syrian tour, spent a night in this hospitable hovel. 



(411) 



412 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



"She thought them very good people," said the traveler's friend patroniz- 
ingly, ' ' and they seemed to have their work at heart. But she was disappointed 
to find them using really lovely china and solid silver forks. All wedding-presents, 
she said, or sent by her mother since, but such show of luxuries hurts the cause 
of Christ. It isn't like giving up all for Him, you know. And this is what the 
foreign missionary must do." 

Of this style of renunciation of other people's goods for Christ's sake and the 
Gospel's, on the part of well-to-do church members, dwelling at ease in American 
Zions, I shall have something more to say in considering the life of the home 
missionary. 

I pass on, now, to the last glimpse of my friends, the Syrian missionaries. 

In ancient Hebron, within a quarter-mile of the Cave of Machpelah where 
lie buried Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Sarah, Rebekah and Leah — we visited Mr. 
and Mrs. Murray, English people, and, with the exception of one other family, 
the only English-speaking household in the town. Mrs. Murray is blind, her 
husband is lame, and, when divinely directed, as they firmly believed, to this 
spiritual desert, the very stronghold of Moslem bigotry, they knew not one relig- 
ious organization to which they could look for the means of carrying on their 
proposed mission. They have lived by the day a life of trust that casts into the 
shade any other I have ever heard of. Mrs. Murray and a Bible reader have 
collected a school of twentj^-five or thirty little girls, whom they instruct in all 
sorts of handiwork, in the rudiments of letters, and in knowledge of the Bible. 
At the vintage season, almost the entire population of Hebron live for two months 
in booths in the vineyards, and the English missionaries go with them, helping 
the mothers to look after the babies, nursing the sick, and, altogether, making 
themselves one with the working people. 

Mrs. Murray spoke with devout gratitude of the favor they have found in the 
sight of the Moslems of both sexes, although the inhabitants of the region are 
notoriously the fiercest in their bigotry and fanatical jealousy of any other faith 
to be found in Palestine. 

' ' We have never been allowed to want for any good thing, ' ' said the blind 
woman, the light of a great peace upon her face " God has mercifully never let 
us doubt that this is our place in His great and wide vineyard. With this per- 
suasion, labor in the foreign field is a blessed cross-bearing, for the Master carries 
the heavier end." 

At the American Mission in Cairo, I had the privilege of knowing, somewhat 
intimately, the laborers who have made strong the foundations of a worthy enter- 
prise. In the Bible-class of young men taught by Miss Harvey (now Mrs. 
Robertson) , I met, besides native converts, a dozen or more young fellows in the 
scarlet uniform of the British soldiery, most of them Scotchmen, to whom the 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



4i3 



church service and Bible-class are like home voices, powerful in restraint and 
in consolation. The English occupation of Northern Egypt has made the care 
of this element of the motley population an important branch of evangelistic 
work. 

Here again, was the same, and by now, the old, old story of peace that flowed 
like a river, and happiness in a life which, to the unlearned in such matters, 
appears harsh and painful, and oftimes barren of desirable results in man's impa- 
tient calculation of profit and loss. 

In this cursory retrospect, I have, with intentional catholicity, dealt with 
various denominations of those who love our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, in 
sincerity and in truth. Of my friends the missionaries in Jerusalem, those con- 
nected with the Church Missionary Society of London and the two gentlewomen 
from our own country, who at their own charges, are doing such work among the 
lowest class of Jews as the Murrays are carrying on among the Moslems in 
Hebron, I cannot even begin to speak. What I know of them personally — their 
toils, their faith and patience, their sublime confidence in the promises to him that 
overcometh — would consume, in the telling, more time than my readers have to 
g?ve, or I the strength to take. 

In our age, as in that in which our Lord lived and taught, the children of this 
world are more cunning than the children of light, but the wisest children of light 
are the ardent spirits that turn their backs upon the homes they love, the refine- 
ments that have become as necessary to comfort as the breath they draw, and, deaf 
to lures of earthly gain and honor, devote life and talent to the service of Him 
who established both Home and Foreign Missions in the general order that has 
never been repealed, and will never be outlawed, until time shall be no more. 

" Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature — beginning 
at Jerusalem ." 

If this be not disinterestedness of the highest order, then I do not know what 
disinterestedness means. If this be not altruism of the stamp that came into 
being on the first Christmas day, then heroism, and self-sacrifice and the love that 
vaunteth not itself, doth not behave itself unseemly and never faileth, are but 
empty names. 



P. S. — Since this book was written news has come to me over two seas of the 
death of one of these devoted women, Miss Robertson, of whom I have spoken in 
the chapter entitled, "The Box Colony." To the first impulse to regret the loss 
to those to whom she ministered, and to the friends who loved her, succeeds our 
solemn thankfulness that her unsealed eyes have looked upon Him for whose 
coming she watched as those who wait for their Lord. 



4H 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT, 



" Does not your heart fail you, sometimes, in this daily round of duty to the 
miserable and unbelieving?" I asked at our last interview. " Are you never 
homesick for the ' Old Kentucky Home far away ? ' " 

" Sometimes — when I am very tired, I am homesick, but not for Kentucky, 
or for America," with the sweet smile that transformed a worn face. " Then, I 
pray — maybe impatiently — ' Lord ! how long ? ' and ' Come quickly, Lord Jesus ! ' 
Usually, I am willing to abide His own good time. ' ' 

She knows now, having entered into the joy of her Lord, why she — and the 
world — have been kept waiting. 




The St org of Armenia 



The Christian People of Ancient Eden and 
Their Persecution by the Moslems. 



ARMENIA AND ITS PEOPLE. 




INCH the foregoing pages were written, and after Marion Harland's 
return from Bible lands, Asia Minor, Syria and Turkish territory in 
both Europe arid Asia generally have been the scenes of events of a 
most startling character. Above all others, Armenia, the ancient 



Eden, and the seat of what is probably the oldest known form of 
Christian belief, has been visited by persecution and massacres of such appalling 
proportions and frightful inhumanity as to recall the early Christian sufferings 
under the Roman rule, when multitudes perished in a single day. Rome's 
enormities, however, have been rivaled if not eclipsed by the horrible outrages 





- 


• : ■■■■■ 




! 



the; dardaneixks. 



recently perpetrated by the Ottoman power in the plains, and on the valleys and 
hillsides of Armenia, where nearly one hundred thousand men, women and children 
of the Christian faith have been slain in cold blood — many with the most dreadful 
tortures, and from three to four hundred thousand others rendered destitute and 
utterly helpless. Furthermore, this gigantic holocaust, with all its attendant 
horrors of flame, rapine and violation, has continued unchecked, under the very 

(4i5) 



4 i6 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



eyes of the so-called civilized powers of Christian Europe. Whatever pangs of 
conscience may have assailed individuals or communities after each successive 
outrage, it stands as a record of shame that, in an enlightened age, no step was 
taken by a single government to arrest the slaughter of the helpless Christians of 
Armenia, or to stay the hand of that nineteenth century Nero, Sultan Abdul 
Hamid, from his sworn purpose of exterminating the Armenian people and 
thereby ending forever the much- vexed Armenian Question. 

Turkish Armenia, the northwest division of Kurdistan, is a great plateau of 
nearly sixty thousand square miles, bounded on the north by the Russian frontier, 
by Persia on the east, the plains of Mesopotamia on the west, and Asia Minor on 
the south. There are in all, at the present time, about four million Armenians on 
the globe, of whom little more than half are in Turkey, and the rest in Russia, 



bracing. Facilities for travel and transportation are exceedingly meagre, and 
all the methods employed by the natives are unusually primitive. "Valis," 
or municipal governors, are appointed hy the government at Constantinople to 
administer the laws, and none but Moslems hold official positions. Among the 
population are found many races, including Turks, Kurds, Russians, Circassians, 
and Jews, besides native Armenians. Fully one-half the people are Moham- 
medan. 

The Kurds are tribal and lead a predatory life, dwelling in mountain 
villages over the entire region. Their number is uncertain, but it is esti- 
mated that in the districts of Erzeroom, Van and Bitlis, there are not less 
than six hundred thousand. Some of these tribes are migratory, like 
the Bedouins of Syria. Almost all are warlike, and many have degenerated 




A KURDISH HOUSE AND ITS INMATES. 



Persia, other Asiatic 
countries, Europe and 
America. In Armenia 
— the name and geo- 
graphical existence of 
which are not recog- 
nized in Turkey — 
there are probably six 
hundred and fifty 
thousand native Ar- 
menians, or one-fourth 
of the whole number 
that are scattered 
throughout the Porte's 
dominions. The cli- 
mate is temperate and 



THE STORY OF ARMENIA. 



417 



into lawless brigandage. For centuries they have made serfs of the 
Christians, trampling them under foot at every opportunity, and extending 
to them no toleration whatsoever. These rude mountain Ishmaelites delight 
in bloodshed and pillage. A few years ago the Sultan, the better to con- 
trol them, and with a view to securing for his army an element equal in ferocity 
and courage to the Russian Cossacks, organized the Kurds into a regular military 
body with the title of Hamidieh, thus honoring these rough-riding, robber war- 
riors with his own royal name. Their spirit, like that of the wild Arab, the 
Cossack, or the North American Indian, is one that scarcely brooks the restraints 
of military discipline. 
They are always for- 
midably armed, and 
weapons in the hands 
of such war-loving 
races are an incentive 
to disturbance and out- 
rage. They have long 
spread universal terror 
among the Armenians 
by their cruelty and 
frightful excesses, but 
it has been reserved 
for our own time to 
wntness such an exhibi- 
tion of barbarism on 
their part as has filled 
Europe and America 
with horror. The 
Turks, although more 
civilized, are only one 
-degree less cruel and 
inhuman than the Kurds. In marked contrast to Kurds and Turks alike, the 
Armenians are peace-loving, industrious, frugal and kindly. Their nation was 
converted to the Christian faith in the fourth century, and has remained true to 
that faith ever since. Their creed and forms of worship are those of the Orthodox 
Eastern Church ; they believe in the Trinity, and although they cling to many 
of the ancient forms and symbols, they render no allegiance to Rome. Their 
native priests or clergy are an earnest, faithful class, and the people themselves 
hold to their simple faith with an intensity that equals the zeal of the Moslem in 
supporting Islam. This tenacity of creed, together with the fact that the 
27 




BAKING CAKES IN ARMENIA. 



418 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



Armenians usually prosper everywhere, has been the means of stirring up bitter 
envy and religious hatred against this peaceable people. 

Armenia is a lovely country. It was the first part of the globe to be settled 
by the human race after the flood, and Mount Ararat, where the ark rested, still 
rears its lofty crest, seventeen thousand feet in height, and overlooks the same 
landscape of valley, plain and mountain that greeted the eyes of Noah and his 
companions when they gazed upon the new-risen earth after the subsidence of 
the Deluge. In a thousand ways, it has a peculiar claim upon the interest 
and sympathy of the civil- r" f 
ized world. Contemporary 
with the mighty empires 
of Assyria, Babylon and 





MOUNT ARARAT AND " LJTTI/E ARARAT." 



Persia, and still later with Rome, it was the birthplace of some of the grandest 
characters of ancient times. From the earliest days, the nation has wor- 
shiped the true God, even though surrounded by idolaters, and its men were 
famed for bravery and its women for beauty and chastity. Of Prince Ara, one of 
its rulers, it is related that when urged by the beautiful but licentious Queen 
Semiramis, of Babylon, to become her husband, he preferred to go to war and lose 
his life and kingdom, rather than desecrate the sanctity of the Armenian family by 
such an ungodly union with an idolatrous queen. 



THE STORY OF ARMENIA. 



419 



When Christianity dawned upon the earth, its teachers in the first century 
A. D. found a ready welcome in Armenia, where the Apostles Thaddeus and 
Bartholomew are said to have preached. Under King Durtad, in the year 302, 
the Armenians were the first people in the world to accept Christianity as a 
nation, and the Armenian Church, founded by Gregory, " The Illuminator," has 
held all the great cardinal truths of the Christian religion throughout the last 
sixteen centuries, and without a single schism or heresy, or an} 7 disrupting theo- 
logical controversy. Its liturgy was taken from that of St. James of the Church 
of Jerusalem, and its form of government has been one steady, unchanging line 
of the Episcopacy, yet without ecclesiastical tyranny. Upon the same patriarchal 
throne at Etchmiadzin, near Erivan, in Russian Armenia, where once sat Gregory 
in 302 A. D., now sits the venerable Catholicos Mugurditch Khrimian, the 
spiritual father of the Armenian people, 
and well-beloved of all. 

Mohammedan domination in Ar- 
menia dates from the Crusades. Hav- 
ing aided the warriors of the Cross on 
their outward progress, when the latter 
were rolled back, discomfited, by the 
Moslem power, the Armenians were 
made to feel the bitterness of a revenge 
such as only a Mohammedan horde 
could inflict. Their country was over- 
run and conquered, their property con- 
fiscated, even their beloved religion all 
but suppressed, and their people en- 
slaved. Five centuries relaxed but 
did not unbind the Moslem bonds. 

Through many generations these Armenian people have suffered oppression and 
outrage at Turkey's hands in unresisting silence. Extortions under the name of 
taxation, gross dishonesty by unpaid officials, and wholesale robbery by the 
Kurdish chiefs or Agas, together with restricted freedom of worship, and 
general persecution, made their position almost unbearable. 

In 1878, the Berlin Treaty was concluded by the European powers, under 
which reforms were guaranteed by the Porte in Armenia, whose people were 
promised security against Kurdish extortions and attacks, and also the fullest 
religious liberty. Immediately after the Berlin Congress, a treaty of defence was 
entered into between Turkey and England, and the result has been that the 
promises made by the Porte to the Berlin Congress, like all others made by the 
same power, were ignored and broken at every opportunity. From that date, the 




1^: 



KURDISH ROBBERS DISGUISED AS SHEPHERDS. 



420 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



period of Armenia's worst sufferings was begun. The abuses to which it had 
before been subjected were now intensified tenfold. Armenians were robbed and 
beaten, and their stores and houses pillaged at will, their wives and daughters 
outraged, their cattle and crops carried off, and murder became the common pas- 
time of the Christian-hating Turk. Mohammedan officials ruled in all places of 
authority, and the word of an Armenian was worthless in a court of justice when 
opposed to a Moslem. All the laws were distorted for the oppression and degrada- 
tion of this wretched subject people. At last so loud did the cry of the oppressed 
become that it again reached the ears of Europe, and the Sultan, being warned, 
once more, promised to institute reforms in Armenia. He simultaneously registered 
a vow to exterminate the Armenian people, as subsequent events have shown. 

Abdul Hamid' s promised reform was inaugurated in September, 1894, by a 
gigantic and indescribably horrible massacre that has hardly a parallel in history. 
That it was perpetrated by the Hamidieh — the Sultan's own specially-named 
troops — is significant of the purpose for which they were organized. The mas- 
sacre of Sassoon is believed, like all the other great massacres that followed, to have 
been inspired from the palace at Constantinople, and Zekki Pasha, who com- 
manded on that infamous occasion, was afterward decorated by the Sultan, as 
were four Kurdish chiefs who had been specially savage and merciless while the 
carnage was in progress. 

THE EDICT OF EXTERMINATION. 

From time immemorial, the Armenians have been a rich source of revenue to 
their Moslem oppressors, who were free to rob, to torture and even to slay them 
at will. This was the inalienable privilege of the followers of Mohammed in 
dealing with the ''infidel ghiaour." When Europe interfered, and especially 
when it became evident that such interference, if unchecked, might ultimately 
lead to the relaxation of Armenia's bonds and possibly even to absolute freedom, 
the Sublime Porte secretly promulgated a policy as bold and startling as it was 
inhuman. That policy, which is believed to be the outcome of Abdul Hamid' s own 
brain, is one that stamps that monarch as the supreme savage of the century, and 
the whole Moslem power as a "barbarian camp," unfit to be tolerated amid civil- 
ized nations. Like all Mohammedans, Abdul Hamid' s religion is his politics. 
He regards the life and property of his Christian subjects as his legitimate prey. 
They are so many dogs, to be whipped or even killed, as the emergency 
demands; and in the present instance, the Armenians were clearly liable to become 
a burdensome obstruction to Ottoman Government, and to the peace and serenity 
of the Sublime Porte. Their tax-paying and tribute^ielding capacity was 
diminishing, as their numbers and the sympathy of Europe increased. To a true 
Mussulman, the path of duty was clear. That their importance as a factor in 



THE STORY OF ARMENIA 



421 



Turkish affairs might be minimized, they were to be led forth to the slaughter, as 
other peoples had been in other years, by faithful Sultans. And so the edict of 
extermination went out from Constantinople, an edict which sealed the fate not 
only of the people of Sassoon, but of the surplus Christian population of Armenia 
as a whole. Valis, military commanders and even subordinate officers, in all the 
principal events that followed, acted under orders from Constantinople. It was a 
program which, carried out to its fullest extent, contemplated the extinction 
of the Armenian race within Turkish territory, by the sword, by fire and by 
starvation. To the Moslem mind, trained to abhorrence of all other religions and 
urged even by the Koran itself to their subjugation, there was nothing repulsive 




ARMENIAN GIRI<S SPINNING. 

In this, but rather the contrary. How this sanguinary policy was to be put into 
practice was soon after disclosed. 

THE MASSACRE OF SASSOON. 

Sassoon is a mountainous province in the southern part of the Armenian 
plateau, east of Lake Van. Inhabited by Armenians and Kurds, the former are 
greatly in the majority. There is, however, no intermingling of races. The 
Kurdish villages are scattered around, being chiefly on the edges of the plateau, 
while the Armenians dwell in the centre of the province. Industrious and frugal, 
the Armenians literally supported themselves and the Kurds, and besides paid 
taxes to the Turkish Government. Of all goods manufactured by the Armenians, 
the Kurds received their share, or bes/i, as they call it. Every spring, the chiefs 
or Aghas of the Kurdish tribes, came at the head of their men ^o collect the 



422 THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 

tribute from the Armenian villages in sheep, mules, carpets, stockings and 
implements. The principal taxes which the Armenians pay to the government, are 
(i) the poll-tax, $2.00 per head, including the new-born male baby; (2) tax on 
real estate; (3) Khamtchoori, namely, five piasters per head of sheep — one-eighth 
of the value of the sheep; (4) tithe of agricultural products. All these they had 
honestly paid, but the legitimate taxes bad been multiplied tenfold by Kurdish 
exaction and by the extortions of the valis and minor Turkish officials, each of 
whom robbed the Armenians at every opportunity. In the Sassoon district, there 




A RRFUGKF FAMILY FROM SASSOON. 



are three Kurdish tribes— the Khanuvdulik, the Busuktzik and the Ousvi— each 
claiming its own tribute. There are other tribes on the borders of Sassoon — the 
Pakrantzik, the Baduktzik, the Khiyantzik and the Belektzik, besides many other 
smaller " ashirets " and all demanded their share. The villages of the Talvoreeg 
district, richer than most others, paid tribute to seven tribes. Some of the other 
villages were visited by as many as ten. The wretched Armenians were stripped 
absolutely bare of everything worth possessing. In 1893, tne impoverished Arme- 
nians decided to resist further robberies. Early in the spring of that year, the 



THE STORY OF ARMEMIA. 



423 



Kurds came with demands more exorbitant than ever, the chiefs being escorted 
by a great number of armed men, but they were driven back by the brave vil- 
lagers. This unsuccessful attack was a new revelation to the Porte. The cry 
of rebellion was raised and Sassoon was marked for the first act in the drama of 
Armenian extermination. 

In August, 1894, Kurdish and Turkish troops came to Sassoon. The Kurds 
had been newly armed with Martini rifles. Zekki Pasha, who had come from 
Erzingan, read the Sultan's order for the attack, and then urged the soldiers to 
loyal obedience to their Imperial master. It is said that on the last, day of August, 
the anniversary of Abdul Hamid's accession to the throne, the soldiers were spe- 
cially urged to distinguish themselves in making it the 
day of- greatest slaughter. On that day the commander 
wore the edict of the Sultan on his breast. Kurds 
began the butchery by attacking the sleeping villagers 
at night and slaying men, women and children. For 
twenty-three days this horrible work of slaughter lasted. 
No pen can adequately describe the diabolical ferocity 
of the prolonged massacre. Some of the Kurds after- 
ward boasted of killing a hundred Christians apiece. 
At one village, Galogozan, many young men were tied 
hand and foot, laid in a row, covered with brushwood 
and burned alive. Others were seized and hacked to 
death piecemeal. At another village, a priest and 
several leading men were captured and promised release 
if the}* would tell where others had fled; and, after 
telling, all but the priest were killed. A chain was put 
around his neck and pulled from opposite sides until he 
was several times choked and revived, after which bay- 
onets were planted upright and he was raised in the air 
and dropped upon them. The men of one village, when fleeing, took the women and 
children, some five hundred in number, and placed them in a ravine where soldiers 
found them and butchered them. Little children were cut in two and mutilated. 
Women were subjected to fearful agonies, ending in death. A newly wedded couple 
fled to a hilltop; soldiers followed and offered them their lives if the) 7 would accept 
Islam, but they preferred to die bravely professing Christ. On Mount Andoke, south 
of Moosh, about a thousand persons sought refuge. The Kurds attacked them, 
but for days were repulsed. Then Turkish soldiers directed the fire of their cannon 
on them. Finally the ammunition of the fugitives was exhausted, and the troops 
succeeded in reaching the summit unopposed and butchered them to a man. 
Io the Talvoreeg district, several thousand Armenians were left in a small 




424 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



plain. When surrounded by Turks and Kurds they appealed to heaven for deliv- 
erance, but were quickly dispatched with rifles, bayonets and swords. The plain 
was a veritable shambles. 

No accurate estimate of the number slain in the first massacre has been made. 
Forty villages were totally destroyed and the loss of life is believed to have been 
from ten to fifteen thousand. Efforts were made to conceal the real extent of the 

carnage, but the 
" blood-bath of Sas- 
soon ' ' has now passed 
into history and cannot 
.^riiMl i be forgotten. 

Some of the in- 
cidents connected 
with this widespread 
slaughter in the Talvo- 
reeg district, between 
Moosh and Diarbekr, 
were of a nature to 
strike the civilized 
world with horror. It 
is said that no respect 
was shown to age or 
sex; men, women and 
infants were treated 
alike ; the women being 
subjected to greater 
outrage before being 
slain. In one place, 
about two hundred 
weeping women knelt before the Turkish com- 
mander, pleading for life, but the brutal officer 
ordered them to be served like the others. One 
letter describing the massacre said: "Some sixty 
young brides and other attractive girls were crowded into a little church where, after 
being assaulted, they were slaughtered and a stream of human blood flowed from 
the church door. ' ' To some women in one village the proposition was made that 
they might be spared, if they denied their faith. ' ' Why should we deny Christ ?" 
they said, and pointing to the dead bodies of their husbands an \ brothers before 
them, they nobly answered, " We are no better than they; kill us t jo "—and so they 
died. A priest was taken to the roof of his church and hacked L o pieces; young 




ARMENIANS KIU.ED IN THE 
STREETS. 



THE STORY OF ARMENIA. 



425 



men were placed among wood saturated with kerosene and set on fire. After the 
massacre, and when the terrified survivors had fled, there was general looting by 
the Hamidieh Kurds. They stripped the houses bare, then piled the dead into 
them and fired the whole, intending, as far as possible, to cover up the evidences 
of their dreadful crime. 

So great was the indignation in Europe over the Sassoon slaughter, that a 
Consular Commission of Inquiry was demanded for the purpose of investigation. 
After a long investigation, a report was made which was only a partial confirma- 
tion of the truth. From the outset everything was against the Commission, and 
especially against the efforts of the European delegates. In Van, Bitlis and else- 
where, witnesses were arrested and intimidated by the government. 

Comparative order prevailed for a time during the period of the Commission's 
sitting, but it was a delusive calm. Its work completed (early in 1895), promises 
of new administrative reforms were made by the Porte, but almost as soon as the 
field was again clear, the massacres recommenced with redoubled vigor. The 
Kurdish Hamidieh were again brought into requisition, and the Mohammedan 
populace in all the large cities of Asia Minor were deliberately inflamed against 
the Armenians by circulating lying rumors of intended attacks on the mosques. 
Soon there was an outbreak at Constantinople in which nearly two hundred 
Armenians were killed by the "Softas," or Mohammedan students, and the 
police. This was followed by a terrific outburst of fanaticism all over the Sultan's 
empire, and by such scenes of massacre as have not been paralleled since mediaeval 
times. Throughout all the vilayets of Armenia ran the red tide of murder. 
Hundreds of villages were swept away, and their inhabitants either slain or 
exiled. In this work of destruction the Kurds played the most prominent part, 
but soldiers and Turkish civilians did their full share. The object was to destroy 
everything so effectually that the Armenians would have no means of living, and 
would have to choose between death and Islam. Their cattle and all movable 
goods were carried off, and everything else destroyed. In some villages even the 
clothing was taken from the backs of the wearers, and they were left literally 
naked. Abdul Hamid's government was completing its diabolical work by reduc- 
ing the population and then confiscating property under the pretended forms of 
martial law, and by forcing the starving Armenians to apostatize to save their 
lives. In some places the poor- wretches yielded to the pressure, but the greater 
number held out staunchly for their faith, many dying rather than surrender their 
Christianity. 

THE LATER MASSACRES. 

In the absence of accurate data it is, of course, impossible to give a reliable 
estimate of the multitudes of Christian Armenians who perished in the great 



426 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



slaughter that followed Sassoon. The figures given below are approximate, and 
as they are compiled from Turkish sources, may be regarded as rather under than 
above the mark. According to Turkish calculations, the number of those who 
were in a condition of starvation in February, 1896, was one-half the agricultural 
population of the vilayets (or districts governed by a Vali or Pasha) of Anatolia, 
(the Turkish name for Armenia) being about 275,000 souls, of whom two- 
thirds were women and children. The figures below present a conservative 
view of the results of the Sultan's policy of extermination during the first 
sixteen months: 



Name of Town. 


Date of Massacre. 


Sassoon, . . . . 


. Aug. -Sept., 


Constantinople, . 


. . September 30, 


Ak-Hissar, . . . 


October 9, 


Trebizond, . . . 


. . October 8, 


Baiburt, . . . . 


. . October 13, 


Gumushane, . 


. . October 11, 


Erzingjan, . . . 


. . October 21, 


Bitlis 


. . October 25, 


Harpoot, . . . . 


. . November 11, 


Sivas 


. . November 12, 


Palu, 


. . October 25, 


Diarbekr, . . . . 


. . October 25, 


Albistan, . . . 


. . October 


Erzeroum, . . . 


. . October 30, 


Ourfa, . . . . . 


. . November 3, 


Kara-Hissar, . 


. . October 25, 


Malatia, . . . 


. . November 6, 


Marash, . . . 


. . November 18, 


Aintab, .... 


. . November 15, 


Gurun, .... 


. . November 10, 


Arabkir, . . . 


. . November 6, 


Argana, . . . , 




Severek, ... 




Tokat 




Atnasia, . . . 




Marsovan, . . 


. . November 15, 


Kaesarea, . . . 


. . . November 30, 


Gemerek, . . . 




Egin, 




Zileh, .... 




Sefert 




Khnous, . . . 




Boulinek, . . . 





0. Killed. 


By Whom Done. 


10,000 


Kurds and Turks. 


172 


Police and Softas. 


45 


Moslem villagers. 


1,100 


Soldiers, Lazes, Turks. 


1,000 


Lazes and Turks. 


55o 




1,900 


Soldiers and Turks. 


. 1,200 


Soldiers, Kurds and Turks. 


1,000 


Soldiers, Kurds and Turks. 


1,200 


Soldiers and Turks. 


1,200 


Soldiers, Kurds and Turks. 


2,500 


Soldiers, Kurds and Turks. 


300 




1,200 


Soldiers and Turks. 


400 




500 


Circassians and Turks . 


250 




1,000 


Soldiers and Turks. 




No details. 


3,000 


Kurds and Turks. 


2,000 


Kurds and Turks. 




No details. 




No details. 




No details. 




No details. 


125 


Turks. 


1,000 


Circassians and Turks 


500 






No details. 




No details. 




No details. 



300 
400 



THE STORY OF ARMENIA. 



427 



The Turks estimated the " reductions " made by Abdul Hamid's slaughter 
policy as follows: 



Armenian population in larger towns, 177,700 

Armenian population in villages, 538,500 

Number killed in towns (estimated), 20,000 

Number of Armenian villages (about), 3,300 

Number of villages destroyed (estimated), 2,500 

Number killed in villages, . . No accurate data. 

Number reduced to starvation in towns (estimated), 75, 000 

Number reduced to starvation in villages (estimated), 360,000 



That these figures fall far short of the actual result of this series of wholesale 
assassinations is not disputed, 
respondents unite in declaring 
sanguinary method has in every 
instance been underestimated. 
But cold figures and dry sta- 
tistics can tell nothing of the 
unspeakable horror of those 
•days of blood, and of the tor- 
tures suffered by the Christian 
population of the cities of Ar- 
menia at the hands of their 
murderers. It is mainly from 
letters received by Armenians 
in the United States from sur- 
viving relatives at home, that 
the true story of those dreadful months has been gleaned. At Trebizond, 
where eleven hundred perished, "only a few Turks were killed," says a 
letter from a fugitive. " Like a clap of thunder in a clear sky, the thing began 
about 11 a. m., October 8. Unsuspecting people walking along the streets 
were shot ruthlessly down. Men standing or sitting quietly at their shop 
doors were instantly dropped with a bullet through their heads or hearts. The 
aim was deadly, and I have heard of no wounded men. Some were slashed with 
swords until life was extinct. They passed through the quarters where only old 
men, women and younger children remained, killing the men and large bo3^s, 
generally permitting the women and younger children to live. For five hours this 
horrid work of inhuman butchery went on, the cracking of musketry, sometimes 
like a volley from a platoon of soldiers, but more often single shots from near and 
•distant points, the crashing in of doors, and the thud, thud of sword blows sounding 
on the ears. Then the sound of musketry died away and the work of looting 



Consular officials, missionaries and the few cor- 
that the total ' ' reduction ' ■ of population by this 




TRKBIZOND, WHERE A MASSACRE) TOOK PL,ACE. 



428 



THE Fly AG OF THE ORIENT. 



began. Every shop of an Armenian in the market was gutted, and the victors in 
this cowardly and brutal war glutted themselves with the spoils. For hours, bales 
of broadcloth ) cotton goods and every conceivable kind of merchandise passed 
along without molestation to the houses of the spoilers. The intention evidently 
was to impoverish and as near as possible to blot out the Armenians of the town. 
To any found with arms, no quarter was given. Some were offered life, if they 





ARMENIANS HELD PRISONERS AFTER THE TREBIZOND MASSACRE. 



renounced Christ and accepted Islam ; but large numbers were shot down 
without any proffer of this kind. One poor fellow when called on to surrender, 
thought he was called on to give up his religion, and when he refused, he was 
hacked to pieces in the presence of his wife and children. 

Over five hundred Christian Armenians were slaughtered in the neighboring 
villages. Untold horrors are implied in this brief statement. Many Armenian 
women vanished, having been either murdered or kidnapped ; most of the 



THE STORY OF ARMENIA. 



429 



Armenian houses were burned to the ground, the survivors being driven like wild 
beasts to the hills and woods. 

' ' Equally sad was the fate of the Christians of Baiburt, whose tragic taking off 
is related in a letter addressed by the survivors to the Armenian Patriarch at Con- 
stantinople. After giving a partial list of the slain, the writers state : ' ' When the 
massacres and plundering began, on account of the prevailing terror and insecu- 
rity, the people were compelled to close all the churches, shops, and schools from 
October 13 to 26, and take refuge in the houses. Letters were sent from our pre- 
late to the commandant of the Fourth Army Corps, at Erzeroum, and to the 
Armenian prelate at Erzeroum asking assistance, but all our prayers remained 
unanswered. After the massacres the Turks advised us indirectly that the order 
was secretly given from the Imperial Palace and was irrevocable ! It was on 
Saturday, October 22, that the fatal hour struck. 
The frantic Turkish mob, assisted by regular 
troops, suddenly fell upon the innocent and un- 
armed Armenians. The bloody work began at 
4 o'clock a. m., and lasted until 12 o'clock in the 
evening (Turkish time). Besides murdering our 
people, the mob plundered and fired the Arme- 
nian dwellings and stores, taking care that the 
Greeks should not be molested. On that fright- 
ful day the Armenian community of Baiburt was 
almost annihilated. Strong men, youths and 
women and even babies in their cradles, and 
unborn children in the wombs of their mothers, 
were butchered. Infants were stuck on bayonets 
and exposed to the view of their helpless and 
frantic mothers. Young brides and girls were 
subjected to a fate that need not be described, 
the part of the Armenians. All the native teachers, with a single exception, 
were murdered with most cruel tortures. Baiburt became a slaughter-house. 
Torrents of blood began to flow. The streets and the bazars were filled with dead 
bodies. On the following day the Turks did all in their power to conceal the 
bodies of those who had been pierced by bayonets. Similar scenes were enacted 
in the surrounding villages." 

The Harpoot massacre was another butchery carried out under orders. This 
was one of the leading stations of the American Mission. Sixty Christians fled to a 
church in the vain hope that its walls would furnish them a shelter against those 
who were crying for the blood of the Armenians. They were permitted for a time 
to believe themselves secure, but suddenly the church was surrounded by a great 




MGR. IZMIRUAN. 
Armenian Patriarch at Constantinople. 

No resistance was possible on 



43° 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



number of Kurds. The doors were then blown in, and the Christians thought 
that they would be massacred within the sacred structure. They were not. Their 
captors took them one at a time outside the church, and there, heedless of the 
cries for mercy from women and children, killed them, either by shooting or 
stabbing them. The first victim was the Protestant pastor of the church, who, as 
he was dragged out, bade the others, if they had to die, to die as Christians. He 
met his death like a martyr. Some of the refugees, in a very agony of terror, 
offered to abjure their faith and accept Islamism, thinking thus to save their lives. 
The offers availed them nothing, for their insatiable enemies, after accepting them, 
dragged the converts out and killed them one by one. The Armenian Church has 
been turned into a mosque, and the Protestant Church into a stable. 

A missionary tells the story of the desolation of Harpoot as it was related to 
him by an eye-witness who saw the Christian quarter in flames and the houses of 
the American Mission burning. He came on to Malatia (the ancient Melitene), 
and found not a house in the Christian quarter standing. In a khan there were 
about twenty wounded men, the sole survivors of a caravan of 200 who had been 
traveling to Harpoot from Northern Syria and whose members had nearly all been 
slain by the Kurdish bands. There were 150 dead bodies lying in the road. At 
Marash (another mission station of the American Board), the same witness, days 
after the massacre, counted eighty-seven dead Armenians in one spot, and there 
were hundreds of bodies strewn around in the near neighborhood. In the villages 
on the plains near Harpoot, each containing from fifty to 1000 houses, the 
evidences of slaughter were sickeningly abundant. The Kurdish butchers had 
slain fully half the population. The door of a house would be burst open, a 
volley fired upon the shuddering inmates, while those who rushed out were caught 
and killed in the fields. Then the houses were plundered, fired and left blazing. 
This was the fate of thousands of Christian homes. 

It is proved beyond doubt that the massacre at Erzingjan started in the office 
of the Vali or local governor, where an Armenian priest of Tevnik was shot down 
by Turkish assassins. Then followed a horrible carnage, during which over one 
thousand Christians were slaughtered. After the butchery, the dead victims 
were dragged by neck and heels into the cemetery and cast into a long, deep 
trench, not unlike the death pit of Galogozan — the murdered fathers, mothers and 
sweet, innocent babes, all calm and peaceful in the sleep of death, flung down 
like carrion. Nothing more horrible or pathetic could be imagined than that 
scene at the cemetery two days after the massacre. The survivors dared not even 
express their grief. 

But the climax had not yet been reached; the appetite of the Moslems for 
Christian blood had merely been whetted, not satiated. Other and equally ter- 
rible butcheries followed at Karahissar, Arabkir, Ouloupinar, Palu, Mardin, Sivas, 



THE STORY OF ARMENIA. 



431 



and Tchoukmerzen, where Kurds and Turks perpetrated wholesale murders and 
swept large districts desolate. The villages round about Erzeroum were almost 
depopulated, the orders for the slaughter of the Christians, as the Moslem troops 
admit, having come from Constantinople. At Sivas the massacre was terrible, 
and a like horror occurred at Marash. The ungovernable fury of the Turks spared 
neither age nor sex, and the brutalities practiced upon women and children may 
not be described. In the Erzeroum massacre fully twelve hundred perished, includ- 
ing women, many victims being mutilated. Bodies of little children, dead and 
mutilated, were found in the fields after the slaughter had ended. Large numbers 
of the victims of these atrocities died the death of martyrs. They fell in the 
Moslem war for the extermination of the religion of Jesus in Asia Minor. 

At Diarbekr, where the victims were numbered by thousands, there was 
abundant evidence that the massacre was premeditated. It was claimed that the 
Armenians had attacked a Moslem mosque, whereas the facts, as afterward dis- 
closed, showed the Kurds and 

Turks to have been the sole 
and intentional aggressors. The 
massacre began on Friday, and 
continued on Saturday and 
Sunday with insatiable ferocity. 

Meanwhile, the story of 
what was taking place in the 
villages and hamlets of the 
different districts had not 
reached the public ear. When 
it came, it disclosed a tale of 
suffering and savagism that has scarcely a parallel. Many hundreds of vil- 
lages were literally swept out of existence. The story of one is the story of 
all: the Kurds, directed from higher sources, swooping down, rounding up the 
cattle, slaying the strong men, outraging and abducting the women, and killing 
even the children, concluding the satanic work by burning everything that would 
consume. In many places the Kurdish troops came equipped with empty sacks 
strapped to their saddles for the purpose of carrying off the plunder. The 
Kurdish chiefs openly declared that they were ordered to slay the Christians and 
take the plunder for their pay. 

An illustration of the Turkish method of extermination is found in the case 
of the village of Hoh, in the Sandjak district. At first the "aghas" (or local 
magistrates) promised to protect the Christians, but when they saw villages 
burning in every direction, they refused to keep their word. All the Christians 
■were told that, under the pain of death, they must accept Islam. They were 






CHILD-VICTIMS OF THE ERZEROUM SLAUGHTER 



432 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



assembled at the mosque, and there eighty young men were picked out and led 
outside the village — for slaughter. Eight escaped, sixty-two were killed, and ten 
wounded. The young women of the village were taken to Turkish harems. In 
and around the villages of Kenerik, Moorenek and Rusenik, and the town of 
Mardin, fourteen native preachers were killed, several being hideously tortured 
before they were dispatched. During one of the days of massacre at Ksesarea, 
an attack was made on the public baths. Six naked Armenian women were 
dragged forth and bayoneted. Young girls were drawn through the streets by the 
hair and the feet. Eight of the villages near Van are totally depopulated, all 
their people slain or fled, except the young women who have been seized and 

taken to Kurdish 
harems. In Van prov- 
ince nearly 200 villages 
have been partially de- 
stroyed. Eleven vil- 
lages around Harpoot 
were forced to accept 
Islam unconditionally 
or die. The wretched 
people were then set 
to killing their fellow 
Armenians, to prove 
the genuineness of 
their conversion. Such 
horrible tortures as 
flaying alive, cutting 
to pieces by swords, 
tearing out the eyes, 
branding on the body 
with red-hot irons, and even tearing out the entrails, filling up the cavity with 
gunpowder and exploding it — these were among the simplest of the diabolical 
measures adopted by the Sultan's officials and his soldiery in dealing with his 
Christian Armenian subjects. Women torn from their homes and outraged, and 
hundreds of young girls forcibly carried off, fiendishly used and wantonly slain, 
and other horrors unnamable, were some of the methods employed in upholding 
the glory of Islam. 

THE SUFFERING AND DESTITUTION. 

These persecutions and wholesale massacres, together with the general 
destruction of property, reduced the Armenian survivors to a condition of utter 
destitution. From the ruined villages, the now homeless women and children 




REFUGEES ON THE TURKO-PERSIAN FRONTIER. 



THE STORY OF ARMENIA. 



433 



flocked to the cities and towns, while the remnant of the male Armenians were 
fain to hide in the mountains. There was a condition of universal suffering 
which the Turkish Government seemed resolved should have the effect of finishing 
the work of extermination so well begun— death from starvation and exposure 
would soon claim the survivors. Thousands had fled to the forests and the 
mountains; the survivors of Sassoon were living in caves, and subsisting upon 
berries and roots until they became livid like corpses. " Hunger- bread, " a 
horrible compost of chopped straw and roots, pounded together and baked, helped 
to keep the life in their emaciated bodies. The babes and the weak women could 
not survive such a diet, and they were quickly perishing when the Christian 
missionaries came, like angels of blessing, with help, in the shape of food and 
clothing. Many had already died of hunger and cold, and all were more 
or less naked. Meanwhile Van was inundated by refugees, and also the 
cities along the Persian border ; 1 
while the interior cities were all I 
filled with crowds of destitute who ! 
had flocked thither from the ruined 
villages. All Armenia was reduced 
to a race of naked beggars. Thou- 
sands of families, lately prosperous, 
were now destitute, their bread- 
winners slain, their homes in ashes, 
and even their little stores of food 
destroyed, so that the}- might starve 
the quicker ! Yet had they, even at I 
this juncture, been disposed to vield, * 

, . - - ^ , . . ' HUNGER BREAD FROM BITUS. 

as some did, to the Turkish oner to 

abjure Christ and turn Mohammedan, persecution would have ceased and they 
might again have been prosperous, with their property restored. But the 
Armenians, although a simple people, have the strong, sturdy character of which 
martyrs are made, and to their honor be it recorded that in a majority of instances 
the offer was spurned. They would rather die than become apostates to the faith 
of their fathers ! 

Very striking is the testimony of some of our most esteemed missionaries to 
the Christian fidelity of the Armenian people. Probably the best known and most 
experienced of all the Americans who have served in the missionary field in Asia 
Minor is Rev. Cyrus Hamlin, D. D., the venerable founder of Roberts College, 
Constantinople. Dr. Hamlin, who is now in the United States, has a life-long 
acquaintance with the Armenian question in its various phases and is a strong 
champion of the right of this oldest Christian nation on earth to be permitted to 
28 




434 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



live and worship in the faith of their fathers. Conversing recently on the subject 
of Armenia's sufferings Dr. Hamlin said to the writer: " The condition of affairs 
in that country has not been exaggerated in the printed reports. I have lately 
finished reading some two hundred letters from missionaries, a very large part of 
them dealing with the oppressions and sufferings of the Armenians, which were 
of a most frightful character. The whole civilized Christian world should help 
these people — they should be saved from death. They can look in no other direc- 
tion for help, for there is no sympathy and assistance to be had from Turkey. 
Indeed, the policy of the Sultan's government is apparently dictated by a desire to 
efface the Armenian people altogether — at least those of them who will not accept 




ARMENIAN WOMEN MAKING BREAD. 



Mohammed. When you talk sympathizingly about these people, a Turk will say 
in surprise: ' Why do you speak in behalf of such worthless trash and try to 
save them ? They can save themselves — all they need to do is to accept Islam and 
then they are safe and out of trouble.' A Turk regards it as strange that an 
Armenian should refuse to purchase his life at the cost of his faith; but there are 
some among them who take a different view. Some of the Turkish soldiers, who 
shared in the terrible atrocities lately perpetrated on the Armenian Christians, 
have been stricken by remorse afterward. One soldier, who had borne his part in 
several horrible butcheries of women and children, was so troubled that he could 
not sleep. He had visions of his victims that ultimately drove him insane. 



THE STORY OF ARMENIA. 



435 



" Mrs. Knapp, a missionary at Bitlis, related a remarkable incident. A sol- 
dier, who had aided in the ruthless massacres of the helpless ones, was terribly 
tormented by conscience. To his wife he said: ' There was one thing about 
those women and their children that I do not understand and I want you to ask 
the wives of the " ghiaour " (Christians) about it. It was very strange. The 
women were offered their lives if they would only say: " There is but one God 
and Mohammed is His prophet," but they would not. They all died in terrible 
tortures, calling on " Hissos Nazareetsees." That is what I do not understand. 
Now, I wonder who this Hissos Nazareetsees is, whose very name made these 




a. 1 

a relief commissioner passing mount ararat. 

women so brave that, with their little children, they could die. That is what 
troubles me greatly. ' 

"The good missionary explained to the Moslem wife, who, in turn, told her 
husband, that the name was that of the worshipful Jesus of Nazareth, Saviour of the 
world, whom the Christians serve." 

THE RELIEF MOVEMENT. 

Appeals representing the condition of the Armenian people as deplorable 
beyond description, touched sympathetic hearts in Europe and America and a gen- 
eral movement for their relief w r as begun. This, how 7 ever, did not suit the 



r 

I. 




43^ 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



purposes of the Turkish Government, which declared its entire ability to take care 
of its own, and even denied the palpable fact of universal Armenian destitution, as 
it had previously denied the perpetration of the massacres. In England a fund 
was raised, under the auspices of the Duke of Westminster, and distributed 
through Consular officials and American missionaries, the Armenians resident 
in Europe and America contributing toward it. Dr. Louis Klopsch, of New 
York, dispatched a commissioner to Van to ascertain the exact facts con- 
cerning the need of the people and to organize a Relief Committee of American 
missionaries. Its Commissioner, William Willard Howard, was not permitted to 
cross the Turko-Persian frontier, being excluded by Turkey. He made a number 
of attempts, at the risk of his life, to push his way through. Passing near Ararat, 
in a lumbering stage, he was attacked by Kurds. Again, on a second attempt, the 
horse he rode was shot and he himself narrowly escaped. In still another effort to 

cross the frontier he had a regular pitched 
battle with Kurds, a number of whom, dis- 
guised as shepherds, were lying in wait for 
travelers whom they might rob and slay un- 
hindered, the whole country being at war. 
Maii) r , besides Armenians, have met their 
fate at the hands of those Kurdish murderers. 
Mr. Howard took the caravan route through 
Russia and Persia, via Batoum, Tiflis, Erivan 
and Khoi, and so across to Van, keeping close 
to the Turko-Persian border for a considera- 
ble part of the journey. At the frontier he 
was driven back by the Turkish officials and, 
menaced b} T their Kurdish allies, he re- 
luctantly gave up the effort to enter Van. 
Mr. Howard's failure, however, did not deter 
the Christian Herald from carrying out its humane project, for, with the co- 
operation of the missionaries of the American Board in Van, it organized a 
most successful relief work, partly industrial and partly charitable, under the 
active personal supervision of Dr. Grace N. Kimball, a medical missionary. 
Through these means several thousands of the needy were fed and supported in 
Van daily. Other relief stations were opened by the same journal at Erzeroum, 
Erzingjan, Harpoot, Diarbekr, Mardin, Gemarek, Aintab, Sivas, Arabkir and 
several other points which had been the scenes of massacre and where the 
suffering was most acute. On these relief stations a fund of nearly $30,000 
was expended. An effort was made by the American Red Cross to obtain 
permission to visit Armenia and distribute relief, but its application met a decided 




AN ARMENIAN BEGGAR IN VAN. 



THE STORY OF ARMENIA. 



437 



refusal from the Sultan's government, although, at the time, the necessities of 
the Armenian people were greater than ever and hundreds were perishing of cold 
and starvation. 

In the noble relief work that was being conducted amid so many perils, one 
figure stands out boldly, that of a woman, delicately reared and highly cultured, 
3^et brave to face even death in the Lord's work, to which she had dedicated herself. 
Dr. Grace N. Kimball will long be remembered as the heroine of Van, whose 
courage and nobility of soul were the means of saving probably thousands of 
precious lives. As the first wave of persecution and slaughter receded, and the 
fugitives were flocking to Van, sick, indigent and nearly naked, Miss Kimball 
gathered what funds she could and quietly 
and without any preliminary flare of trumpets, 
began a systematic work of relief, which had 
already achieved excellent results before the 
startling series of massacres began in the fall 
of 1895. There were many times when Dr. 
Kimball and her associates were imperiled in 
consequence of their relief work, as the Turks 
resented all sympathy with the Armenians or 
the extension of an} T aid that would prolong 
their lives. But all stood bravely at their posts. 
So with the American missionaries at Harpoot 
and Marash (where the mission buildings were 
burned down after being looted) and at every 
other point throughout Armenia. Although 
warned by United States Minister Terrell at 
Constantinople to leave and, with their wives 
and children, go to the coast for safety, the brave 
missionaries clung to their posts, preferring to 
stay by and help the victims of persecution and if need be even to die with them, 
rather than leave them to the cruel mercies of the Turks. And they were sorely 
needed, for every day increased the suffering. Before October, 1895, a large 
number of Armenians had actually died of hunger. Those who saved themselves 
by flight reached safety in rags, man}- with only a single garment to protect them 
against inclement weather. United States Consul Graves, writing from Talvoreeg, 
thus described the condition of these people: " Bread they have not tasted for 
months, and curdled milk they only dream of, living, as they do, upon greens and 
the leaves of trees. There are two varieties of greens which are preferred, but 
these are disappearing, as they wither at this season. Living on such food, they 
become sickly; their skin has turned yellow, their strength is gone, their bodies 




DR. GRACE N. KIMBAL,!,. 
" The Heroine of Van." 



438 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



are swollen, and fever is rife among them." A touching picture of the gratitude 
of the sufferers on receiving relief from the missionaries, is contained in a recent 
letter from Van: " Men and women," the writer says, "come to us, their eyes 
streaming with tears of gratitude, and clasp the missionaries' knees, and even 
prostrate themselves, kissing the hands and feet in their gratitude. Many mis- 
sionaries even have no shelter and are compelled to sleep on the naked earth, while 
attending to the relief work." In all the larger cities of Armenia — Van, Aintab, 







DESTITUTE ARMENIANS BEFORE MISS KIMBAEE'S REEIEF STATION AT VAN. 



Bitlis, Erzeroum and Trebizonii , the streets are filled with pitiful-looking crowds 
of fugitives, haggard and emaciated. They come from the country districts, which 
the massacres have, in many places, swept as bare as a desert. In a few of the cities, 
little bands of American missionaries, aided by the Consular officials, stand 
between thousands and death. Hundreds of Christian churches have been 
' desecrated by Kurds and Turks, their fonts and altars befouled with offal, their 
sacred vessels stolen and the buildings either burned or transformed into stables 



THE STORY OF ARMENIA. 



439 



or mosques. The Turkish jails are full of prisoners, all Armenians, arrested on 
the most frivolous pretexts, or on none at all, the general charge being rebellion. 
Such is the horribly unsanitary condition of those jails (as at Trebizond and 
Erzeroum), that few will come out alive. Many have already died from the 
effects of their imprisonment. 

THE ARMENIAN REVOLUTIONISTS. 

It has been invariably asserted by the Sultan's Government that the Armenian 
troubles were the outcome of a deep and widespread revolutionary movement, 
and that the Turks themselves, rather than the Armenians, were entitled to com- 
miseration. These revolutionists, who were controlled by a patriotic Armenian 
society known as the Huntchaugists, were directed by a governing power outside 
of Turkey. Their emissaries were everywhere, and they were constantly foment- 
ing disturbance between Turk and Armenian. They had imported arms and 
money into Turkey and it was at their instigation that the rebellion broke out in 
such formidable force at Sassoon, which the Turkish army found much difficulty 
in quelling. It was due to the influence of the Huntchaugists too, and under the 
inspiration of their example that the Armenians in other places had arisen against 
the kind and beneficent government of Abdul Hamid. Indeed, so formidable 
was this insurrectionary movement that the Porte had been compelled to 
use force in disarming the rebellious populace of the large cities, and the latter 
in several instances had so stubbornly resisted that blood had flowed, and 
many innocent and inoffensive Moslems had perished at the hands of the desperate 
Armenian rebels. Incidentally, some of the latter were doubtless also slain; but 
this fate only happened to them when in open rebellion. When the good- 
hearted Queen Victoria wrote a letter to the Sultan expressing regret over the 
disorders in Asia Minor, Abdul Hamid explained that the troubles in Anatolia 
(the name Armenia having no geographical existence in Turkey), had been pre- 
cipitated by the Armenians themselves, that the printed reports in the British 
press were wilful exaggerations and that far from the Armenians being the greatest 
sufferers, a majority of the victims were Turks ! He professed regret that Her 
Majesty should believe any further disorders possible, in view of the reforms he 
had decided to inaugurate in the disturbed districts. 

This ' ' ostrich ' ' policy of denying what is obvious to the whole world, is 
characteristic of the Sublime Porte. With the facility for intrigue, distortion and 
falsification, which peculiarly belongs to the Oriental, Abdul Hamid and his 
ministers, have endeavored by constant prevarication, to hoodwink Europe as to 
the real status of the Armenian case. But the Turk's pose as a martyr and a 
saint is an ineffective one, and the mask is easily penetrated. 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



One of the most mendacious statements circulated by the Ottoman Govern- 
ment was the charge that the massacres were deliberately invited and provoked by 
the Huntchaugists, that they planned the disturbances, knowing that the result 
would be death to thousands of their fellow-countrymen and women, yet satisfied 
even at such a fearful cost to excite the sympathy and provoke the interference 
of Russia or some other great power. This charge has been emphatically denied, 
and is so wholly brutal and out of harmony with the Armenian character, as to 
be utterly unworthy of belief. 

It is undoubtedly true that, when pressed to the last ditch, the Armenians 
at different places made a desperate stand for their lives. These were gleams of 
heroism amid the massacres that lighted up the darkness as the sunshine glints 
through the storm-clouds. At Zeitoun, a fortified town of Armenia, the Christian 
townspeople took arms and made a brave resistance. They mustered in force, 
captured the citadel and turned its guns on the dismayed Turks, having first pro- 
vided for the safety of their wives and children. Bravely they held out for weeks, 
and a strong force under Mustafa Pasha failed to dislodge them or recapture the 
town. Resistance was also encountered by the Turks and Kurds at the hands of 
the Christians of Diarbekr, and many fell under the Armenian attacks, although 
the latter were finally overpowered and massacred. Some of the villages too 
opposed a brave resistance. But in the end, the story was the old familiar one 
of overwhelming forces and cruel butchery. 

ATTITUDE OF THE EUROPEAN POWERS. 

While the great crime against the Armenian people was being enacted, and 
even while the red tide of massacre was at the flood, Europe looked on with 
apparent indifference. The leading powers of Christian Europe — Germany, 
Russia, England, France and Italy — had their magnificent fleets riding at anchor 
within reach of Constantinople, and a single resolute remonstrance would have been 
heeded by the Turks, and might have saved many lives. But the word remained 
unspoken, the cannon lay silent, while a Christian nation was being exterminated. 
The six great powers were dead- locked in hopeless impotence. Russia, it was 
believed, would have consented to occupy Armenia and to compel a cessation of 
the massacres, but England would not yield assent. Germany, too, had its 
jealousies, and Italy, France and Austria were each so intent on watching the 
movement of the other powers that none of the three cared to bestir themselves. 
The United Stales was represented in the Levant by several war vessels, for the 
purpose of affording a certain assurance of protection to American interests and 
the American missionaries; but our naval demonstration was insufficient to save 
from destruction the American Board Mission buildings at Harpoot and Marash, 
which were burned by Turkish mobs during the riots and massacres in those cities. 



THE STORY OF ARMENIA. 



441 



But if governments were inactive, Christendom was active, and leading men, 
in both Europe and America, were loud in their denunciation of the Sultan and his 
bloodthirsty policy. Lord Salisbury, the English Premier, speaking on a public 
occasion, at a time when the patience of Europe had apparently been well-nigh 
exhausted, said: "Above all treaties, all combinations of the powers, in the nature 
of things, is Providence. God, if you please to put it so, has determined that 
persistent and constant misgovernment must lead the government which follows it 
to its doom. The Sultan is not exempt any more than any other potentate from 
the law that injustice will bring the highest one on earth to ruin." According to 
latest advices, the English Government was still depending on Providence to save 
the Armenians. It had seemingly forgotten its own sacred pledge to secure to 
that afflicted people the right to free worship and the several reforms conceded 
under the Berlin Treaty. Tenfold stronger was the emphasis employed by Mr. 
Gladstone in a public utterance on the massacres. That eminent statesman, 
replying to a delegate of Armenians, said: 

"We may ransack the annals of the world; but I know not what research 
can furnish us with so portentous an example of the fiendish misuse of the powers 
established by God for the punishment of evil-doers, and for the encouragemenl 
of them that do well. No government ever has so sinned; none has so proved 
itself incorrigible in sin, or, which is the same, so impotent for reformation. I 
have lived to see the empire of Turkey in Europe reduced to less than one-half of 
what it was when I was born, and why ? Simply because of its misdeeds — a grea*. 
record written by the hand of Almighty God, in whom the Turk, as a Moham- 
medan, believes, and believes firmly — written by the hand of Almighty God 
against injustice, against lust, against the most abominable cruelty. Such a 
government as that which can countenance and cover the perpetration of such 
outrages is a disgrace to Mahomet, the Prophet whom it professes to follow, it is a 
disgrace to civilization at large, and it is a curse to mankind." 

HOPE DAWNS FOR ARMENIA. 

On January 23, 1896, a new and totally unexpected development of the 
Armenian question occurred, which took Europe by surprise. Throughout the 
Armenian troubles, and especially when the censure of Europe was strongest 
against the Porte, Russia maintained an attitude of friendly tolerance toward 
the government of Abdul Hamid. When the other powers proposed that their 
respective governments should have the privilege of an extra guardship in the 
Dardanelles, Russia, through its ambassador at Constantinople, waived any claim 
to such concession by the Sultan. It was due to the influence of Russia also that 
an attempt by England to make a naval demonstration before Constantinople 
was abandoned. Germany and France, while ostensibly on friendly terms with 



442 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



the Czar's government, really stood in constant apprehension of some bold, 
defiant stroke by Russia, that might incidentally either strengthen or shatter 
their friendly relations, while adjusting matters with Turkey to its own satis- 
faction. England, suspiciously standing aloof from all alliances, yet pretending 
in turn to friendship for Russia, France, Italy and Germany, occupied a unique 
position. As the special patron of Turkey, she was to a large extent responsible 
for the series of frightful massacres which had disgraced Europe, and made of 
Asia Minor a region of death and desolation. Yet England, up to the very last, 
took no step to stop the butchery, but satisfied her conscience with mild official 
and unofficial remonstrances, and ineffective political manoeuvring. At the 
height of the troubles, it w r as intimated to England that Russia stood ready to 
occupy Armenia with an armed force, and to undertake the pacification of that 
country, but would do so only with the consent of all the powers. To this pro- 
position England turned a deaf ear. Never would she consent to such a scheme; 
her jealousy of Russia's growing influence in the East forbade it altogether. 
The Armenians, if saved at all, must be saved by some other power. Rather 
than see their country come under Muscovite domination, even temporarily, Eord 
Salisbury's humane policy would prefer the continuance of the massacres as 
the lesser evil. 

Suddenly came the news — late in January, as already stated — that a treaty 
or compact had been concluded between Russia and Turkey, for offensive and 
defensive purposes, under which Russia agreed to defend the Dardanelles, in the 
event of war against either country, and also to restore order in Armenia. The 
treaty, while it guaranteed the integrity of the Ottoman Empire, also made the 
Czar the master of the Dardanelles. France, by a secret understanding with 
Russia, consented to the treaty and agreed to support the Czar's government 
throughout. Germany and Austria were also supposed to be consenting and 
interested powers, Italy and England being ignored. Thus, by a single coup, 
M. Nelidoff, the Russian ambassador to Constantinople, won for his royal master 
a double diplomatic triumph: securing the pacification of Armenia and the 
cessation of the massacres without involving Europe in a general war over the 
dismemberment of Turkey, and grasping for the Czar the splendid prize for 
which Russia has long hungered: the sovereignty of the Dardanelles. 

With the new order of things, and with Sultan Abdul Hamid as a treaty 
vassal of the Czar, there comes a gleam of hope to Armenia, the hope of peace 
and brighter days to come. Many years must elapse, however, ere the " blood- 
bath of Sassoon," the death-pit of Galogozan and the other dark memories of 
the terrible period of 1894-96 be forgotten, even by those who were children 
when these events occurred. But the fathers and mothers of Armenia, who have 
.shared in those sufferings, will carry the recollection with them to the grave. 



THE STORY OF ARMENIA. 



443 



ACTION OF OUR GOVERNMENT. 

American sympathy for Armenia's sufferings took a moic direct r.nd practical 
form than that of any of the European countries. Clara Barton courageously 
proceeded to Constantinople, confident that the Sultan could be persuaded to relax 
his opposition to the Red Gross entering Armenia on its work of relief. Not only 
did the American people send generous contributions of money to feed the starving 
refugees, but the press of the 
nation, not standing in awe 
■of any alliances, was unani- 
mously outspoken in its strong 
•condemnation of the barbarous 
policy of the Porte. A con- 
current resolution was intro- 
duced in Congress, looking 
to the amplest protection for 
American citizens in Turkey, 
and directing that our govern- 
ment ask the European powers 
to act promptly for the pre- 
vention of further bloodshed, 
and a repetition of the mas- 
sacres. From all parts of the 
Union, the President and Con- 
gress received, almost daily, a 
multitude of letters, petitions 
and memorials, urging that the 
time had arrived when the 
United States, as a Christian 
nation, should place on record 
its abhorrence and condemna- 
tion of the bloodthirsty and 
fanatical Ottoman policy in 
Asia Minor. Returning mis- 
sionaries, many of them 
•coming from places that had been the scenes of massacre, confirmed the stories 
■of outrage and slaughter and deepened the impression already made by the 
recital of Armenia's woes. From the pulpits of all Christian denominations came 
thunders of eloquent denunciation against the Turks. England, whose fleet had 
been stationed off Constantinople during the atrocities, received her share of cen- 
sure. One of the most striking of these clerical fulminations was a namerously 




CLARA BARTON, PRESIDENT, AMERICAN RED CROSS, 
Who is risking her life to relieve destitute Armenia. 



444 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



signed and earnestly worded memorial by the Bishops of the Protestant Epis- 
copal Church of the United States, which was presented to President Cleveland. 
In this document — doubtless one of the most remarkable in the history of the 
Christian Church in America — the reverend memorialists declare that the situ- 
ation in Armenia calls for ' ' the indignant protest of all civilized and Christian 
people." It then proceeds: 

The entire severance of Church and State in our country should not be allowed to stifle 
our sympathies or hamper our action in a case like this. It should rather stimulate them. It 
is a case which especially appeals to us as men and Americans. As citizens of this Republic, 
we have learned to know and dared to maintain that no form of religious belief should expose 
its adherents to persecution. 

It is as representatives and maintainers of this essential American principle that we appeal 




for national action in this matter of a foreign persecution whose details are too horrible to depict 
or enumerate. 

We sincerely trust that some measure or measures consistent with the national traditions 
and the national dignity may be devised, and that speedily, which shall bring the whole force 
of the national sentiment to bear upon the solution of this subject ; to cause the instant sup- 
pression of the massacres, to succor the unhappy and impoverished survivors of them, and to 
secure for the future ample guarantee for the safety of a Christian people in the exercise and 
maintenance of their faith. 

We feel profoundly that our nation should cease tc recognize the Turkish Government as a 
civilized power so long as its barbarous treatment of the Armenians continues, and that it should 
bring every influence to bear upon the civilized nations of Europe which may cause them to 
present a united front in demanding that such atrocities cease at oir:e and forever. 



THE STORY OF ARMENIA. 



445 



Turkey having sown the wind, must reap the whirlwind, and the aftermath 
in the shape of claims for heavy damages that will pour in upon the Sultan's Gov- 




AMERICAN MISSION AT HARPOOT, PARTIALLY DESTROYED. 

ernment from many quarters, may give Abdul Hamid cause to repent some of the 
acts of his favorite Hamidieh troopers. Prominent among the claims to be made 




THE AMERICAN COLLEGE AT MARASH, WRECKED BY KURDS AND TURKS. 

in American interests are those of the American Board of Commissioners for 
Foreign Missions for the partial destruction of the eight buildings of the mission 



446 



THE FLAG OF THE ORIENT. 



at Harpoot and the wrecking and looting of the handsome college at Maraslu 
These, with similar claims for damages to the property of our citizens at many 
other places in Asia Minor, will be vigorously pressed. But they are probably 
small compared with the aggregated claims of other governments, whose citizens 
have suffered in person or property. 

* * * 

Such is the story of Eden — of that once beautiful land where, in the morning 
of the world, "God planted a garden," and "walked in the cool of the day," 
but which man's wickedness has transformed into a scene of slaughter and deso- 
lation. It may well be asked whether the Almighty has not forgotten Eden. 
Travelers who have passed through it recently, declare that, judging solely from 
its physical aspect, it would be regarded as the very last place on earth to be so- 
favored. Treeless and barren, sterile and rock}^, mountain and plain are alike 
uninviting; yet those bleak hills and the bare, dry valleys may have been rich in 
foliage and juicy grasses, while every description of flower, and shrub, and tree, 
luxuriant with color and laden with fragrance, may have clothed the scene with a 
beauty unequaled. For many centuries the human race has sought to rediscover 
the site of the Garden of Happiness. Scientists, explorers, historians, antiquarians 
and students of the ancient legend, which appears in many tongues and belongs 
to many lands, have searched the wide world for it. And to this high Armenian 
table-land the investigations 01 almost all have brought them at last. It meets all 
the requirements of Scripture and tradition. Here flowed the four rivers — the 
Pison, the Phrath, the Hiddekel and the Gihon, some of the ablest scholars now 
identifying them with the Tigris, the Euphrates, the Arras and the Djorokh rivers 
of to-day. ' ' Reduced to a matter of modern geography, ' ' writes William Willard 
Howard, who has traveled over the entire region, " it may be said in a general 
way that the site of Eden is now covered by the Turkish provinces of Van, Bitlis 
and Erzeroum, and that the centre of the Garden would be midway between the 
cities of Van and Erzeroum. Included in this district are the cities of Van, Bitlis, 
Moush, Erzinghian and Erzeroum, The scene of the Sassoon massacre is also 
within the limits of the district. The caravan route from Persia to the Black Sea 
passes through the Garden of Eden from end to end, entering it at Baiazid and 
leaving it at Baiburt on the road to Trebizond." Kurds, Turks, Lazes, Circassians 
and Armenians dwell there, the Armenians alone being Christians, the rest their 
enemies and persecutors. In agriculture the land has stood still for 4000 years ; 
in civilization it has retrograded from the patriarchal standard of early Bible times 
into a condition of barbarism such as no other part of the world can equal. 



I 




£*.V S. .**.2»fc.V y.tfte^ 



V 



.4 3* „ 



4> 







% ^ sMkX //>^'"°o 

• JO. ' 

" 1V * 





t \/ .-^k: :WX. \/ ^ 

f.*V c»*..i^.% 




V*\.i^ *c> «*" 



*\ - 





6 S % 



6°+ 



V a* V *V 




<y - * « o 



^o 1 





D0BBS BROS. ^ ♦ VVa ^ •V8|fel>^IL ^i i*. ^ V % * 

jir~2 si imm: if :mm'- **** v** 



^3^4^32084 



♦ o 



